MECHANICSVILLE, Va. - Southwestern's men's cross country team concluded its season Saturday with a 22nd-place finish at the NJCAA Division II National Championships at Pole Green Park.
SWCC, which entered the national championships ranked 19th in the most recent USTFCCCA national poll, scored 638 points to finish 22nd in the field of 41 complete teams. Lansing CC repeated as national champions with 66 points. This was the first time since 2020 SWCC had a full team compete at the national championships.
"For a group of five freshmen, three of which had never run cross country before this season, I thought this was a great result for us," said Scott Vicker, SWCC director of cross country/track & field. "Coming in ranked 19th, we really wanted to beat that ranking. But I think this was a very fair reflection of our team and is a result we can be proud of."
The 8K course at Pole Green Park consisted of four laps of a single 2K loop. The course itself ran fast, but slightly longer than 8K, causing times to look slightly slower than they were. Adjusting for a true 8K distance, four of the five Spartans would have run their best times of the season.
Zach Roome ran his best race of the season, getting clipped by teammate Brandon Briley at the finish line as the pair of Spartans finished 86th and 87th overall in 27:36.3 and 27:36.9. Dillon Starlin was the next Spartan across the finish line in 159th place, running 28:38.3. Cam Swapsy ran 28:46.8 for 166th place and Jacob Driskill finished 232nd in 30:07.5.
"I thought Zach and Cam, both, ran by far their best races of the season. Their times don't reflect how much better they ran Saturday because of the extra distance, but they both ran great," Vicker said. "Dillon and Jacob both ran times that would have lined up right with their best times adjusting for the extra distance. Brandon didn't have his best day on the course Saturday, but he battled to the very end. Just getting that experience of racing at the national championships was important."
As a team, the Spartans moved up throughout the field during the course of the race. At the 2K mark, the Spartans sat in 25th place as a team, dropping to 26th by the halfway point. With just 2K to go in the race, Southwestern was 24th with 668 points. As a collective, the Spartans gained 30 places over the final 2K of the race to move up into 22nd place. Southwestern finished 25 points ahead of Region 11 opponent NIACC, which entered the weekend ranked 17th in the country.
"Going into the weekend, one of our big goals was to beat NIACC," Vicker said. "NIACC was picked ahead of us in the preseason poll, then beat us by 18 points at Indian Hills and just 1 point at the Region 11 Championships. So we knew we'd been closing the gap on them and really wanted to finish ahead of them. To be able to do that on a day where Brandon finished 30 or so spots behind where we expected is a testament to how well the other four guys ran. It was a total team effort on Saturday, which was really exciting.
"This was a great building block moment for us," Vicker said. "This team came so far from the beginning of the season. I'm excited to continue working with them and continue building around them. Hopefully we can take a big step forward next year."
The Spartans are set to lose just Starlin from this year's team, as he will graduate in the spring. After not running cross country or track in high school, Starlin finished his Spartan cross country career just missing making the program's all-time top 20 performance list. He ran his best time of 27:48.5 at the Region 11 Championships.
