LINCOLN, R.I. – For the second time in the last three years that the Community College of Rhode Island Tri-State Cross Country Championship has been staged, Eastern Connecticut State University senior Ryan Escoda (Newtown) has won the individual title. And in large measure due to that, the Warriors claimed the team title for the second time in three years Saturday.
 
Escoda, who has led his teammates at the finish line 14 times in 15 career races, was timed in 26:44 over CCRI's Flanagan Campus 8,000 meter layout.
 
As a team, the Eastern men placed all five of its scoring runners among the top seven to record just 23 points and outpace the five-team field in relatively easy fashion. Worcester State University featured the second and third finishers but its No. 4 runner was just 17^th overall as the Lancers scored 48 points and placed a distant second.
 
For the women, senior captain Maggie Santacroce (Bristol) led all of her teammates at the finish for the first time in her four-year career in a time of 21:29 over 6,000 meters with an overall finish of third as the Warriors captured second place as a team in the four-team field, eight points behind Salve Regina University.
 
The Seahawk women took the top two spots behind senior Catherine Norton (who finished eighth overall when the race was last held in 2019) and freshman Breanne Shipman – who trimmed Santacroce by only four seconds -- then filled in at No. 4 behind Santacroce with sophomore Heather McGee.
 
Eastern junior Kelsey Zator (Scotland) – the team's top runner in each of the two previous meets this year – was one second behind McKee and fifth overall (21:47), with sophomore Elisabeth Rodil (Milford, NH) sixth overall (21:54) and first-year runner Iris Bazinet (Pomfret) seventh (22:10). Junior Keara Fontaine (North Kingstown, RI) completed Eastern's scoring by recording 11^th place in scoring (14^th overall) in a time of 22:36.
 
In his fourth career race as a first-year member of the team in 2018, Escoda was timed in 28:42 in this race in cruising to a winning margin of nearly a minute over first-year teammate John Walker (Westerly, RI). In 2019, Escoda was fourth overall (26:43) behind three Trinity College runners in a field of 92 runners at CCRI in sparking the Warriors to a second-place finish in a field of nine teams.
 
Behind Escoda Saturday, Eastern's four other scoring runners ran as a pack, finishing in succession and within 40 seconds of one another. Walker was fourth overall (27:58) and was followed in order by sophomore Jake Haddad (Vernon), senior Jorich Swift (Mansfield) and first-year runner Noah Linton (Tolland), the latter competing in his second race of the year after joining the team in September. Haddad was timed in 28:10, Swift in 28:12 and Linton in 28:38
 
Eastern participates in the Connecticut College Invitational Oct. 16 at Harkness Memorial State Park in Waterford in its final tuneup before the Little East Conference Championships Oct. 30 at Castleton University.
 
Eastern captured both the men's and women's LEC Virtual Meet last November. The women have won the in-person LEC title two of the last three years (2017 and 2019). The men were fourth in 2019.