With two weeks into its season, the Waynesburg men’s cross country team looks to improve as the season progresses.

Last Saturday, Sept. 9, the team performed in its second event of the 2017-2018 season at the Bethany Invitational. The team lost a few seniors last season, but ended up placing fifth out of fourteen teams with their younger team.

“The cross country team competed at a high level and that did translate to some very good scores,” said Head Coach Chris Hardie. “Overall, the way they performed matched up with the results they had visually, which is the style to watch how the runners compete.”

Hardie was impressed with the efforts from the younger members of the team.

“I think they competed well, at a really high level and that did translate to some really good scores and some good times on paper,” Hardie said. “I am really happy with that overall.”

Freshman Mac Colomb finished 20th overall in the event, posting a time of 28:06. Colomb’s time was the best out of all Waynesburg men’s cross country runners. According to Hardie, Colomb had a stellar performance and stood out at the Bethany Invitational.

Freshman Matt Durgin placed 29th overall with a time of 28:35, which was Waynesburg’s second-best time among competitors this past Saturday. Freshman Jordan Payne tallied the third best time for the Yellow Jackets with a time of 28:51.

“I feel that getting more sleep the night before helps me focus more on the race and not to joke around,” said Colomb. “I really have not been a captain on the team and with the wisdom of [senior] Matthew Shinkle, it helps calm [me] down.”

Colomb was also lauded by the Presidents’ Athletic Conference for his efforts, claiming PAC Men’s Rookie of the Week honors.

Durgin was pleased with his performance, but always has a mindset of getting better day in and day out.

“I feel that getting stronger every day, improving my speed but getting the mileage down is the main thing,” said Durgin. “[Junior] Joel Kuzminski is the hardest worker in my opinion and his work in the summer shows me that I need to keep training to have good seasons in the future.”

Kuzminski finished fourth out of all Waynesburg runners with a time of 28:54. Rounding out the top five of Waynesburg runners was freshman Matt Mansfield, who logged a time of 29:02, which was 39th best out of the 139 runners.

Overall, the Waynesburg men’s cross country team had seven runners that finished within a period of just over a minute and a half of each other. Six of the seven runners that were on top were freshmen, a glance at the potential depth the team holds.

As the season progresses, Hardie looks for the veteran returners to creep up in the mix and decrease their times. With hard work from every runner on the cross country team their chances to compete for the PAC Championship looks good this year and for years to come, according to Hardie.

One thing to keep an eye on throughout the upcoming weeks is that Waynesburg has a competitive advantage and disadvantage.

“Our depth is probably one of the deepest teams in the conference so we will have to utilize that,” said Hardie. “The disadvantage for us is that we may miss a front-runner which we really haven’t had in a while. During Brendan Keany and Ben McColly’s career, we had a front-runner, but now we are missing this and somebody has to step up and get some of the low points for us.”

The Waynesburg Yellow Jackets cross country team is back in action on Saturday, Sept. 16, at the Allegheny Cross Country Classic in Meadville, Pennsylvania. The meet is scheduled to start at 10:40 a.m.