Kirshenbaum Earns All-League Honors as Lehigh Places Sixth at Patriot League Championships

Saturday, October 28

Bethlehem, Pa.

11 a.m.

Lehigh University

Patriot League Championships

Photo by: Don Paul

Kirshenbaum Earns All-League Honors as Lehigh Places Sixth at Patriot League Championships

10/28/2017 8:10:00 PM | Men's Cross Country

Results – TFRRS | PDF
Full recap on PatriotLeague.org

BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Lehigh men's cross country team raced to a sixth place finish on Saturday morning at the Patriot League Championships, hosted at the Goodman Campus Cross Country Course. Sophomore Jeffrey Kirshenbaum led the Mountain Hawks with the first All-Patriot League honor of his career with a second team all-league finish of 11th place overall. Kirshenbaum's time of 24:37.6 was also the ninth-fastest time run by a Lehigh runner on the Goodman Campus 8K course.

"Coming in, I thought we had a team that could compete and win, but I also knew that a good race could get us sixth, and unfortunately I don't think today was a good race," said head coach Todd Etters.

Army West Point placed three runners in the top 10 and five in the top 15 to take home the team title with 43 points for their first team championship since a co-team title in 2008 and their first outright championship since 2001. Four-time defending champion Navy (47) finished runner-up, followed by Boston U. (79) in third and American in fourth (88). Bucknell finished fifth (94), followed by Lehigh (126), Holy Cross (230), Lafayette (248), Colgate (257) and Loyola (305).

"You look at the results now and it's not that surprising," Etters said. "Army has been coming on and beat Navy two weeks ago. I think every team is not 100 percent at this point so it's just about the teams that can put it all together mentally at the end. Physically I think everyone's pretty equal, but then you have to account for the mentality going into that and I don't think we were ready for that, and Army was so they got the victory today."

Kirshenbaum (24:37.6) led the Lehigh pack for the first time this season with his 11th place overall finish out of 107 finishers. Senior Patrick Reilly followed in 25th place (25:16.8) with sophomore Matt Kravitz (25:19.0) right behind in 26th. Sophomore Victor Yegon placed 29th overall in 25:24.7 and freshman Brad DeMassa (37th/25:39.3) made his PLC debut with a fifth place team finish. Freshman Seth Slavin (44th/25:53.8) and Ryan Grace (47th/25:58.8) rounded out Lehigh's top seven.

"Jeff's a gutsy runner," Etters said. "It's proof that if you just put yourself out there and keep fighting, the league race is all about staying in that battle and being engaged. That's what Jeff does really well, and he did it well today. He beat a bunch of guys that beat him at Paul Short so he moved up in the conference and he's just a tough guy."

Senior John Tolbert (25:59.3), junior Brian Arita (26:29.5) ,senior Joseph Inglis (26:41.5), junior Samuel Layding (26:47.6) and senior Henry Paul (27:13.4) also competed for the Mountain Hawks.

"We have to do a much better job of staying in a pack," Etters said. "That fell apart on us today. It wouldn't surprise me if Pat (Reilly) was able to rebound and get right back into the mix for a nationals spot, and I think Jeff is right there as well for a top 25 spot. The region is the same way our league is, so we could certainly move up and come out of this with a top 10 finish at the region and I think we can be as high as sixth place, so that's what we have to fight for now. We have to lick our wounds a little bit and figure out what went wrong today, rebound and get after it. The season is not over."

Lehigh will have one last race on the Goodman Campus Course in two weeks on Friday, Nov. 10 when they host the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regionals and look to qualify runners for nationals. Check back to Lehighsports.com leading up to the meet for complete coverage.

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