Coming off a pair of bronze team placements at the Iona Meet of Champions last month, the Binghamton men’s and women’s cross country teams kicked off October going up against its strongest competition of the year at the Lehigh/Paul Short Run. With runners putting up encouraging performances in both the gold and open races, the men finished 38th out of 44 teams while the women settled for 39th out of 42 teams.

“The main expectation was just to give our athletes a chance to be in a high profile Division One meet that simulates the NCAA Regional meet,” said Binghamton head coach Annette Acuff. “That’s why we attend every year. Especially for freshmen, It’s a great experience going into the NCAA regional meet if you’ve never competed at that level. It also gives some of our more experienced runners, or elite runners, an opportunity to compete at a really high Division One level.”

Before the top-level gold races began, Acuff elected to send some of her younger runners to compete in the open races on the men’s and women’s side. This included all of the freshmen men, who in turn clocked in some notable times. Leading the way in the men’s open 8K was freshman Bobby Mayclim, who had a career-best 24th-place finish out of 588 finishers with a timecard of 24:54.8. Along the fringes of the top 100 were freshman Oliver Jibb in 86th with a time of 25:43.4 and freshman Nick Thomas finishing his collegiate debut in 26:06.2 to finish 126th.

“Even though I knew some of our freshmen would be able to help us out in the gold race on the men’s side, I elected to put them in the open race because it’s their first 8K,” Acuff said. “So they’ve never raced an 8K before, and if your first 8K is in that gold race that can just be a really tough place to open up in an 8K … It couldn’t have worked out any better, to be honest.”

After the open races finished up, it was time for Binghamton’s top runners to race in the gold races. Up first was the 370-runner-strong men’s gold 8k, and characteristically leading the way for BU was graduate student Josh Stone, who powered through illness and the warm Pennsylvanian afternoon to secure a time of 24:43.2 and an individual placement of 96th.

“Some races, [Stone] just feels a little bit better than others,” Acuff said. “He just didn’t feel 100 percent is the best way to put it at Lehigh. He definitely felt better at Iona than he did at Lehigh. So that hurt him a little bit at Lehigh. I think he could have finished in the top 50, if not, quite honestly, maybe even the top 30 on a day where he is feeling 100 percent.”

Also putting up her own ace performance in the women’s gold 6k was junior Sydney Leitner. After battling poor conditions while rehabbing from injury at Lehigh last year, Leitner made the most of her day Saturday to earn 76th overall in the 371 runner field, crossing the line in 21:13.1.

“For [Leitner], that was a very solid, consistent performance for her at Lehigh,” Acuff said. “She had a little bit of a rough race at Lehigh last year, but very consistent with kind of how she did there her freshman year. And we were really pleased with her performance at Lehigh — that really helped from a team perspective.”

Aside from the top of the order Saturday, both sides of the action saw Binghamton runners falling toward the middle of the pack overall. The mass of points accumulated from this bulk of outside of the top-200 finishes, coupled with some top runners not making the trip, led the men to finish 38th and the women to finish 39th overall. Acuff, however, emphasized the toughness of reading into team results given the unique nature of Lehigh’s large field.

“It’s really hard to pack up in a meet the size of Lehigh,” Acuff said. “When you’ve got so many runners, you just can’t with the masses like that. You just get lost a little bit in the numbers, and it’s really hard to run as a pack. Any team struggles with that.”

Acuff will get the best look at how her team may perform for the America East Championships later this month when Binghamton travels up to Vermont for the Vermont Fall Foliage Invite. First race is set for 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 20 at the Hard’ack Recreation Area in St. Albans, Vermont.