MANCHESTER – Freshmen led the way for the Eastern Connecticut State University men's and women's cross country teams Saturday in the season-opener at the Trinity College Bantam Invitational at Wickham Park.
For the women, freshman Samantha McKosky (Deep River) placed 17th overall in a field of 111 in a time of 21:06 over 5,000 meters in leading the Warriors to sixth place in a nine-team field. For the men, freshman Omar Abdelsame (Plainville) was 23rd overall in a time of 17:29 among 88 participants and classmate Chris Osuba (Windham) followed in 39th place overall over 8,000 meters to pace the Warriors to a fifth-place showing in a field of eight.
The women totaled 173 points, five ahead of seventh-place University of Saint Joseph (CT) and 42 behind fifth-place U.S. Coast Guard Academy. In the men's competition, only 24 points separated the 1-through-4 finishers. Eastern was fifth, a single point ahead of Salve Regina University.
Connecticut College captured five of the top 11 places in easing to a 22-point win in the women's race over runner-up University of Hartford. Host Trinity bettered Coast Guard by 16 points to take the men's title.
Behind McCoskey for the Eastern women, juniors Mariah McPhee (Bristol) and team captain Sofia Amaral (New Milford) placed 27th and 39th, respectively, with freshman Megan Albert (Plantsville) and sophomore Ariel Smith (Stratford) running together and finishing eight seconds and two place apart at 51st and 53rd to round out Eastern's scoring runners.
Behind Abdelsame, Osuba, sophomores Cooper Goslin (South Windsor) and Noah Hallisey (East Lyme) and senior Taylor Flynn (Old Saybrook) rounded out the team's five scoring runners by finishing within nine places and 18 seconds of one another.
Eastern competes in the University of Massachusetts Invitational Saturday at 10:30 a.m.
