At its final meet before the America East conference championships, the Binghamton men’s and women’s cross country teams put together the squad’s best performance of the season at the Vermont Fall Foliage Invite on Sunday. Racing on the course that will host the AE championship meet next month, BU brought home every individual and team title possible, highlighted by a commanding sweep of the podium in the men’s 8k.

“Certainly, the reason we came up here was to get a race on the conference course,” said Binghamton head coach Annette Acuff. “We were very focused today. We executed really well. I’m just really pleased overall with both efforts and focus on both sides.”

On the women’s side of the action, junior Sydney Leitner secured her first career collegiate victory by crossing the line in 17:53.8 to beat her Catamount rival to the line by four seconds for the win. Also clocking in the top 10 in the team’s winning effort were freshman Anna Gansrow in sixth with a time of 18:18.8, and senior Jennifer Mui in ninth with a time of 18:25.7. Also inside the top 20 were the duo of sophomore Vicky Mordvinova and graduate student Molly FitzGibbons with respective time cards of 18:33.7 and 18:37.0 to finish 15th and 16th. These collective efforts gave BU a two-point margin over hosting Vermont to take the women’s 5k team title.

“I thought [Leitner] had a really good race today,” Acuff said. “She started well and then was able to finish really strong in the last mile of the course.”

The biggest statement of the day from BU, however, came during the men’s 8k. Leading the 89 finisher field by a commanding 25-second margin was graduate student Josh Stone, who took his first individual title of the campaign with a time of 24:46.7. The true statement, however, came from the finishers behind Stone. In one of the most dominant showings in program history, all seven of Binghamton’s points-eligible finishes came within the top 10 finishers.

This command over the men’s 8k field started on the podium with junior Andrew Rosenblatt and freshman Bobby Mayclim both turning in career-best finishes of second and third with times of 25:21.4 and 25:22.5, respectively. The next Binghamton pack placed fifth and sixth with the duo of junior Austin Wefer and freshman Nick Thomas clocking in at 25:36.0 and 25:40.2. Rounding out the top-10 for BU were sophomore Liam Cody in eighth with a time of 25:54.6 and graduate student Asa Friedrich in ninth with a time of 25:56.5. When the final tallies were counted, Binghamton clinched the men’s title by a margin of 35 points.

“Having freshmen finish in our men’s top five, I think, is pretty outstanding,” Acuff said. “To have freshmen in only their second 8k race ever be able to have that confidence and race consistently well like that for the team, I think it takes a bit of confidence at the D1 level to do that. [Mayclim] and [Thomas] both executed really well today.”

Sunday’s complete sweep was the first time in years that BU completed sweeps of individual titles and team titles — the last individual title sweep came in 2022, while the last team title sweep came in 2023 [Bella note: in recap]. Acuff attributes this success to the health and rest of her teams.

“We had a pretty solid week of training this last week, and we didn’t overdo it,” Acuff said. “We kept checks and balances with everything … we’ve been able to keep everyone healthy, so that made a big difference. I also think the kids were eager to compete on the conference course.”

BU will hope to replicate its success in Vermont on Saturday, Nov. 2 as it returns to the course for the AE championships. The first race’s start time is to be determined at the Hard’ack Recreation Area in St. Albans, Vermont.