Temple University men’s cross country finished fourth out of five in the Last Chance Meet at Florida State University on Friday morning.
Temple finished in fourth place with a score of 117, while Syracuse University won the event with a score of 31. Michigan University finished second with 42 and Florida State finished third with 49.
“Coming down here and getting a chance to race against a handful of our country’s top 20 teams was an eye-opening experience, especially for our young guys,” said head coach James Snyder. “We talk about being a team that will continue to grow and improve, we came down here and got our butts kicked by a Syracuse team, a Florida State team and a Michigan team that all have sights on making the national meet.”
Senior Kristian Jensen, the only senior on the team, finished with a team-best time of 24:36.1, which ranked 20th overall.
Kristian was this team’s top performer this season and a leader for the younger runners both on and off the race track, Snyder said.
“[Jensen] had options to play in different schools with much better teams at the time, but he made the decision to come here to leave his mark and write his own chapter in the history books, and he’ll go down as one of the best runners we’ve had in our program’s history,” Snyder added.
Freshman Christian Fitch finished in 27th place with a time of 25:15.5. The rest of Temple’s team finished outside the top 30, as junior Ethan Koza finished 31st and freshman Jeppe Risvig finished in 33rd place.
“I’m excited to see what the future has in store for years down the road, but the message right now is that we just got to get better,” Snyder said.
The Owls will now go into a short offseason before the spring track season begins.
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