Michon, Oremus claim individual titles
It was a victorious weekend for the Saint Joseph’s University men’s and women’s cross country teams at the TCNJ Blue/Gold Invitational, as both groups boasted a first place individual finish.
The men’s team finished second of the four participating teams. Sophomore Zach Michon held off Christopher Luciano of the University of Pennsylvania by just a fifth of a second to place first in the 5K with a time of 15:24.51.
“He [Michon] had an injury last year going into the fall,” men’s head coach Mike Glavin said. “He only lost a week or a week and a half, but with an incoming freshman it kind of takes you out of the game a little bit. He had some good races, but never quite got back to what he was going to do, so this was a nice kick off for him.”
Nine of Penn’s runners finished within 2.21 seconds of Michon.
“My goal going into it [the race] was kind of to run with the Penn kids, which is what I did,” Michon said. “I didn’t feel like it was necessary to take the lead at any time. The last 25 meters is kind of when I stepped up.”
Sophomores John Walker, Colin Gallagher and John Clark all finished with collegiate-best 5K times.
“What it [the race results] shows is this incredible depth,” Glavin said. “I told them going into the meet that we had pretty serious depth this year, meaning we’re probably 12 to 15 runners deep. That’s about as deep as we’ve ever been at this quality since I’ve been here and this is, believe it or not, my 29th year.”
The women’s team finished second as well, but junior Lindsey Oremus placed first of the 68 racers. Oremus led from the beginning, finishing with an 18:10.07 time.
“I went out and within the first half-mile, I was pretty much by myself,” Oremus said. “I felt for a lot of the race I was just trying to keep it mental and I knew I was ahead of everybody. Within the last mile, I thought that the girls behind me were my girls and the girls behind me were an entire pack of like six or seven Penn girls.”
According to women’s Head Coach Melody O’Reilly, Oremus’ performance was consistent with her usual strategy.
“Lindsey just went out and performed kind of the way she always does, which is to go out pretty fast in the beginning and just hang on to it as long as she can,” O’Reilly said. “She did exactly what I would expect her to do and, although she wasn’t challenged most of the race, that group of Penn girls was catching her pretty fast at the end, but she held them off.”
Senior co-captain Cassidy Weimer also placed in the top 10.
“I think Cass [Weimer] was right behind me,” Oremus said. “She’s always in great shape. She’s always on my tail, if not in front of me.”
Junior Lucy Harmon and sophomore Emily Bracken each set new collegiate-bests 5k times, which O’Reilly believes is a good sign for the future.
“I actually was really, really happy with how we performed overall,” O’Reilly said. “We had so many course bests and personal bests happen in that race and it’s our first race. It tells me that everybody trained over the summer and is ready to go. I think we’re going to have a great season.”
Both teams will return to action at the Rider Invitational at Rider University on Sept. 15 at 5:45 p.m.
