St. Lawrence University's men's cross country team recorded its best finish ever in the "Gold" race at the Paul Short Run at Lehigh University on Saturday, finishing 20th overall and second among Division III teams in the 42-team field.

The Saints had what has become their typical grouping at Lehigh with all five scorers within 20 seconds, but Williams had two in the top 30 to take Division III honors with a 17th place finish. SLU had 557 points while Williams had 474. Johns Hopkins was 30th, Bates 35th and Allegheny 40th among the other Division III teams in the field. The team title was won by Navy with 95 points with Guelph second and top-ranked Division II entry Adams State third.

"The guys raced great today," said coach John Newman. "Although it wasn't a perfect race for each of our scorers our depth and tight pack helped us to achieve our goals for the weekend. We definitely wanted to be competitive in the race as a whole but also to represent division three and be in the mix with the other top ranked teams from the Northeast. Williams was the toughest D3 program to match up with, especially in a meet of this size with so many high quality runners from other divisions. They have two exceptional individuals in Colin Cotton and Bijan Mazaheri that gave them two really low scores to get their team score started. We were then able to get four in ahead of their third with Wesley Kirui coming in right with their third, as our fifth man."

Sophomore Thomas Caulfield led the Saints with a 93rd place finish, scoring 91st in 25:11, the third different Saint to lead the pack in four races thus far this season.

Spencer Patterson was the second SLU finisher, 108th, scoring 105th in 25:20 while Trevor Bibb was 116th, in 25:23 and scored 112th, Joe Smith 119th in 25:25, scoring 115th and Wesley Kirui completed the Saint scoring with a 140th overall place which scored 134th in 25:31.

Ben Fishbein was the sixth Saint finisher, 223rd overall in 25:58 while Scott Smolensky completed the Saint top seven with a 232nd place finish in 26:01. Evan Page ran 26:23 and was 284th overall.

Adam Bankert led a Saint contingent in the open race at Lehigh with a 115th place finish in 26:43. Harrison Sloan was 137th in 26:55 while Andrew Jarombek ran 27:11, Evan Garvey 27:51, Jack Martin 27:54, Zane Beldon 28:14 and Caleb Kessler 28:24.

The Saints are now off until Oct. 25th when they will run in the NYSCTC Championships in Rochester.