Twenty-one men’s teams started the 8,000 meters at the Joe Handelman ’52 Princeton Fall Classic on Friday, and 20 of them got five runners across the line. Rutgers entered exactly five.
Two did not finish.
The Scarlet Knights left Princeton as the only program in the race without a team score.
The women did score, and finished last of the 18 teams that did, with 526 points, 131 behind Idaho State. Neither race involved the Rutgers varsity. None of the 14 runners who made up the Scarlet Knights’ top
sevens at Nuttycombe a week ago, Micah Lawson and Lorena David among them, raced Friday, and Rutgers brought 10 runners in all. Elon won the women’s 6,000 meters with 78 and No. 8 Syracuse won the men’s race with 39.
Five Entered, Three Finished, and No Score
Kyle Rakitis led Rutgers through the first half of the men’s race. He was 88th at 800 meters, 85th at 1,500 and 104th at 3,500, then dropped to 141st by 4,500 meters and did not reach the 5,500 mark. Gavin Leffler, a freshman from Wilmington, Del., worked from 148th at 1,500 meters up to 130th at 5,500, ahead of every other Rutgers runner at that point, and did not reach 6,400.
Owen Martin was first among the three who did finish, 140th in 26:47.4 after climbing from 158th at 800 meters. Jack Moran ran within 11 seconds of him the whole way and finished 6.7 seconds back in 143rd at 26:54.1. Peter Simpson, a freshman from Haddonfield, was 165th in 27:53.3.
Because Rutgers did not have five finishers, all three were removed from the scoring, so Martin’s 140th was worth no points and displaced no one. Had Rakitis and Leffler simply jogged in behind the last finisher in the field, who crossed in 31:46.4, Rutgers would have scored 632 and placed 20th, nine points ahead of Morgan State.
Penn State, the only other Big Ten men’s program at the meet, also entered exactly five, three of them freshmen. All five finished, and Penn State scored 398 for 14th. Monmouth started 17 men, lost four to DNFs and still scored. That is what a roster with margin looks like, and Rutgers sent one with none.
Syracuse put five runners in the top 13 scoring places, 2-5-7-12-13 for 39, on a one-through-five spread of 20.3 seconds. William & Mary was second with 82 behind individual winner Hayes Trapp, who ran 24:08.5, and No. 24 Princeton was 11th with 297.
Hernandez Closes, Then an 87-Second Wait
Gianna Hernandez ran the best race of anyone in scarlet. She was 86th at 4,400 meters, covered the last 1,600 in 5:58.5, faster than all but 31 of the 168 finishers, passed 24 runners doing it and finished 62nd in 22:26.8. At this meet a year ago, as the fifth Rutgers woman in a varsity lineup, she ran 22:45.3. Friday she was 18.5 seconds faster.
Then nothing for 67 places.
Kelly Shanklin, a freshman from Annandale, came through 130th in 23:54.2, 1:27.4 behind Hernandez. Melissa Keenan, a transfer from Brandeis by way of East Brunswick, ran the most patient race of the five, 157th at 800 meters before climbing to 134th in 23:57.3. Michaela Schlemo went the other way, 77th at 800 meters and 142nd by 3,100, and finished 137th in 24:03.4. Jasmine Hall, a freshman out of BASIS Flagstaff in Arizona, was 160th in 25:42.5.
The math was 61-112-115-116-122 for 526, a team time of 2:00:04.2 and an average of 24:00.8. The one-through-five spread was 3:15.7, the widest of the 18 scoring teams by almost a minute, and still 1:36.6 without Hall. Because Syracuse and Morgan State finished only four women apiece and did not score, Hernandez’s 62nd place was worth 61 points.
Idaho State took 17th with 395 on 44-73-81-91-106. All seven Idaho State finishers beat Rutgers’ second runner. For Rutgers to pass them, Shanklin, Keenan, Schlemo and Hall would each have needed to find 1:19.5.
Elon put five inside the top 29 scoring places to beat No. 24 Penn State, the only other Big Ten program in the field, by 45 points. Robert Morris’ Julia Dill won the race in 20:43.4, and host Princeton, ranked 25th, was sixth with 185.
The Other Half of the Depth Chart
I wrote after Nuttycombe that the men had a front and no pack and the women a pack and no front. Friday was a look at what stands behind both, and the honest answer is not much.
This was not the varsity, and I won’t pretend it was. In 2024 and 2025 Rutgers raced their top group here as the final tune-up before Big Tens, and a year ago at this meet Lawson broke 24 minutes for the first time in his career. This year none of them ran. Whatever the reason for that choice, the team that lost to Idaho State is not the team that will line up in Madison. Take that as you will for how you view this team heading into the Big Ten Championships.
In August I called this recruiting class the most credentialed group Rutgers had brought in. Half of it has looked the part. Molly Domurat scored at Nuttycombe, Daphne Roskowski and Lydia Bereznitski displaced, and Jay Adimala and Blake Sealy both raced it. The other half raced Friday and went 130th, 134th, 160th, 165th and did not finish.
It was the depth, and the depth finished last.
That is a hard sentence to write about 10 runners, and it is not a verdict on any one of them. Hernandez cut 18.5 seconds off last year’s time here and closed faster than all but 31 runners in her race. Martin and Moran never let more than 11 seconds open between them. But depth is not an individual stat. It is the cushion that lets a team survive a bad day, and Rutgers sent a men’s lineup to a 21-team meet with no cushion at all. When two runners stopped, the team stopped with them.
Rutgers goes back to the Zimmer Championship Course in Madison for the Big Ten Championships on Oct. 30, the course where the varsity ran the B races a week ago and where Lawson’s time would have placed 144th in the championship race. Then the team returns to the Goodman Campus course at Lehigh, which they have already raced twice, for the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional on Nov. 13. Seven run there, five score, and the sixth and seventh are the only insurance a team has.
Friday showed what Rutgers looks like without it.
Is two weeks truly enough time to make this team ready for the Big Ten Championships?
