Now senior captain Noah Carey competes in a cross country meet on Sept 14, 2018.
Credit: Chase SuttonSenior captain Noah Carey led the way for Penn cross country this weekend in the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships, finishing with a career-best 23:56.60, enough for seventh place and a first team All-Ivy nod.
Carey boasted the best time of any male Ivy Leaguer outside of cross country powerhouses Harvard and Princeton. Juniors Michael Keehan and Zubeir Dagane rounded out the Quaker’s male top-20 finishes, which were instrumental in edging out Columbia and taking a comfortable third place.
Sophomore Oliver Stewart and senior Ray Sellaro also contributed, with 22nd and 34th place finishes respectively. Sellaro’s performance was particularly impressive, as he improved from a 60th place finish in his only other cross country Heptagonal Championship appearance.
Carey had a dominant first split, holding fourth place after the first mile. He dropped to eighth throughout the second split, but kept his ground and finished strong.
The rest of the Quaker scoring lineup had opposite experiences: Keehan, Dagane, Stewart, and Sellaro all finished over 10 places better than their first-split positions. Their rises were all incremental, as they all either held or gained position with each split after the first.
The Penn women's team landed fifth place behind senior captain Ariana Gardizy’s 15th place finish and 21:09.2 time. The team finished with 135 points, just two and three points ahead of Dartmouth and Cornell.
Gardizy had a strong first split, coming in sixth place and just one second behind the wire-to-wire winner Kayley Delay. As the race progressed, however, Gardizy couldn't secure her placement, eventually finishing over a minute behind Delay.
Sophomore Olivia Morganti represented Penn’s other top-20 finish, with a 21:24.2 time. In her third collegiate 6K, the steeplechase specialist massively improved from her Lehigh Invitational and PSU National Open times.
Rounding out the scoring lineup were junior Lizzy Bader, sophomore Fabianna Szorenyi, and senior Niamh Hayes. At 31st, 34th, and 35th, they all finished more than 16 places above the next Quaker.
Both the men's and women's teams will look forward to competing in the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship Nov. 12 at Lehigh.
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