Senior John Johnston steadily pulled away from the field on a soggy and muddy Ronald C. Hoffmann Cross Country Course at St. Lawrence University on Saturday, winning the individual championship by five seconds and leading the Saint men's cross country team to its third straight New York State Collegiate Track Conference Cross Country Championship.

Johnston, second a year ago, won the individual title with a time of 25:46 and the Saints put five runners in the top 15 to take the team title.

SLU, ranked first in the region and tenth nationally, finished with 31 points with Rochester second with 53, Rensselaer third with 107 and RIT fourth with 120 in a 10-team field.

"We approached today with a few simple goals in mind as well as a different race strategy. I thought our race plan could be risky with the team title on the line and the fact that we knew U of R would be gunning for us. At the start of the day I felt that any one of our top four runners could deliver the individual title, but I am thrilled that Johnston prevailed with Seth, Kip and Rakoc in close range. Scotty bounced back well from a very off race at Pre-Regionals and gave us a needed 5th man to clinch the team championship," said Saint coach John Newman.

The Saints placed four in the top seven with senior Seth Jackson finishing third in 25:53, senior Steve Kiplagat fifth in 25:57 and junior Sam Rakoc seventh in 26:01. Freshman Scott Smolensky was 15th in 26:48 to complete the Saint scoring while sophomore Brendan Courneene was 24th in 27:10 and senior Alex Calderwood was 29th in 27:18 for SLU's top seven.

"The guys delivered on our strategy and also ran our best team effort, ever on our home course. We actually averaged 5 seconds faster for each of our top five runners than ever before. Today was a confidence booster for the team and will give us some good momentum as we head into Liberty Leagues next week.

"I want to publicly thank our entire St. Lawrence staff for a great meet set up. Despite the wet and sloppy conditions the course looked great and we received lots of positive remarks from the other schools that competed today. We also had a lot of students-athletes that came out to volunteer and support our runners," Newman added.

Other Saint finishers included freshman Aaron Tompkins, who was 35th, senior Tim Liponis in 37th, sophomore Zach Nelson in 46th, freshman Trevor Bibb in 56th and senior Sean Callahan in 57th.