Syracuse Men’s Cross Country delivers a Top-10 finish at the Battle in Beantown Invitational

By Amaan Mahdi | @amaanm009

The 7th ranked Syracuse Men’s Cross Country team placed inside the top 10 at the Battle in Beantown – one of the nation’s top collegiate cross country invitationals hosted by Boston College. The Orange came off a 4th place finish last week on the Panorama Farms Course at the Virginia Invitational meet. This Beantown 8k race was dominated by Ivy League schools like Cornell and Dartmouth who all finished inside the top-5. Harvard took the trophy home with a first place finish.

SU Senior Silas Derfel led the way for the Orange. He placed 27th for a time of 24:41.4, almost 10 seconds faster than the next Syracuse runner, Nathan Lawler. The redshirt senior came in at 24:51.6 and placed 34th. The rest of head coach Brien Bell’s squad finished outside of the top 50. Julian Franjieh, Gabriel Planty and Noah Beveridge crossed the line at just under 26 minutes in 53rd, 75th, and 87th. Joey Hendershot and Patrick Malone finished outside the top 100 at 26 minutes respectively. 

Syracuse racked up a total of 249 points at Franklin Park, 24 ahead of ACC rival Boston College. But this isn’t the first time the Orange have dominated the conference battle. In the Beantown meet last year, SU finished ahead of BC by about 130 points. The year before that, the Orange outscored the Eagles by almost 400 points. However, Virginia dominated the ACC in last year’s Beantown meet. The Cavaliers finished with 20 points, almost 200 ahead of the Orange

SU gets a two week rest before heading northwest to Wisconsin for the Nuttycombe Invitational. ACC rivals Notre Dame and NC State both finished ahead of Syracuse in last year’s invitational despite SU’s Silas Derfel’s top-10 placement. The Orange hope to change things around as the race begins on October 13th.