Gavin Rossi and Micah Lawson finished three-tenths of a second apart on the Goodman Campus course Friday night, and the absence of a gap between them is the reason Rutgers is bringing a trophy home from Bethlehem.
The Scarlet Knights beat Saint Joseph’s 35-36 in the men’s 6,000 meters, one point, the narrowest margin cross country scoring allows. The women needed no such arithmetic, putting up 26 points to the Hawks’ 68. Rutgers swept both races at the Lehigh Invitational in its 2026 season opener.
The Front Two Decided It For The Men
Rossi, a junior who transferred in from Monmouth and was the only transfer to the men’s roster this offseason, won the race outright in 18:17.6. Lawson, a senior, came through at 18:17.9. Saint Joseph’s senior Gavin Mogck was next at 18:22.5, and the four-and-a-half seconds between Lawson and Mogck are, functionally, the entire meet.
Hisham Ettayebi was fifth in 18:39.5, giving Rutgers three of the top five. From there Saint Joseph’s took over. The Hawks went sixth, seventh and eighth with Ethan Fingerhut in 18:43.5, Brendan Hefferan in 18:44.7, Matt Hoffman in 18:49.5, and put Ian Romea 12th in 18:55.6 to close out their five.
Rutgers answered with Kyle Rakitis 13th in 19:00.6 and Jack Moran 14th in 19:02.1. Add these add for 1-2-5-13-14 for 35, against 3-6-7-8-12 for 36.
Despite this, The Hawks were the tighter team all night. Their one-through-five spread was 33.1 seconds, compared to Rutgers running 44.5 seconds from Rossi to Moran. Saint Joseph’s also won the fifth-man battle, the one that usually decides meets this close, with Romea two places clear of Moran. Four of the race’s top eight finishers wore Saint Joseph’s singlets.
None of it mattered against a one-two finish. Had Lawson dropped a single position, had Mogck gotten past him in the last hundred meters, the scores flip to 36-35 and Saint Joseph’s wins the meet. Rutgers’ team time of 1:33:17 beat the Hawks’ 1:33:35 by 18 seconds across five runners, an average of 18:39 to 18:43. Host Lehigh was third with 78 points in a nine-team field.
David Dominates The Women’s Race
The women’s race was over early and never got interesting, in a good way given Rutgers’ domination. Lorena David, a senior, won in 21:25.1, taking the line 21.8 seconds ahead of the next scorer. That next scorer was junior Kelseigh O’Neil at 21:46.9, also a Scarlet Knight.
Sophomore Maeli Gleason (22:09.4) and freshman Molly Domurat (22:09.6) came through two-tenths apart to score fifth and sixth, and senior Sofia Condron closed the five at 22:35.6. Freshman Daphne Roskowski (22:39.1) and junior Cassidy Kidd (22:46.7) followed as the displacers.
Rutgers averaged 22:01 across its scoring five to Saint Joseph’s 22:34, 33 seconds per runner over a 10-team field. The Garden State Track Club, competing as a club entry, was third with 78, and Lehigh took fourth with 108. Because that club scored and because unattached runners did not, the finishing places and the scoring places diverge through the top 15.
Freshmen Already Making an Impact
Mere days ago. I had noted that this Rutgers recruiting class for cross country was easily the best blend of quality and quantity it could have asked for. While I sang the praises of each runner, I was careful to not gloss over that this is still a Big Ten school, and that Friday would not tell us much.
Friday told us something.
Domurat, the Flemington product and Group 3 champion, scored fourth for Rutgers in her first collegiate race and finished within a fifth of a second of a returning sophomore. Roskowski was the team’s sixth woman. On the men’s side, Alex Patelski ran 19:06.9 for 18th overall to slot in as Rutgers’ sixth man, and Gavin Leffler (19:23.5) and Blake Sealy (19:24.1) came through within a second of each other behind him.
Four of the fourteen runners who made up Rutgers’ top seven in the two races were freshmen. Jay Adimala, the most credentialed recruit of the group, had a quieter debut at 19:50.6, and Lydia Bereznetski (23:10.9) and Jasmine Hall (23:29.3) filled in behind the women’s scoring group.
Clearly, I was wrong, but in the best way.
Despite this hot start, the caveat writes itself. Rutgers was the only Big Ten program on the property. The field behind Saint Joseph’s and Lehigh was largely Division II and Division III with Kutztown, Rowan, Moravian, DeSales, Muhlenberg, and Ramapo running. A season opener run on a Friday evening in early September is not a referendum on the team’s conference success. Nicol Starkes’s group has not yet raced anyone who will be at the Zimmer Championship Course on Oct. 30.
What Friday does carry forward is the ground itself. Rutgers will run Goodman twice more with the Paul Short Run on Oct. 2 and, more to the point, the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional on Nov. 13. The Scarlet Knights now have a race’s worth of knowledge of a course where their season will end. The hardest two days remain Nuttycombe on Oct. 9 and the Big Ten Championships three weeks later, both in Madison, with the Princeton Fall Classic on Oct. 16 between them.
A one-point win over a Saint Joseph’s team that ran better as a unit is not evidence that this program has closed the distance between what it signs and what Wisconsin signs. It is evidence that the distance is now being argued over. Rutgers cross country spent last season getting written about for who was coming back. It opened this one by winning two races on a night when four of the people who decided them had never run a college meet before.
