This past Saturday, the University of Rhode of Island cross country team won the New England Championship for the first time since 1952.
15 universities in the New England region traveled to Boston, Massachusetts to compete in the annual cross country New England Championship hosted at Franklin Park. It had been 71 years since the Rams had last won the meet, but at last year’s meet they had their best results since 1964, finishing third of the twenty teams that competed. The Rams scored 31 points, beating the University of Massachusetts by 23 points and the University of New Hampshire by 78 points. This was the best team score since Brown’s 25 points back in 2004, and it was the largest margin of victory since 2019, when Providence outscored Northeastern by 33 points.
URI achieved such a low score because they had four runners finish within the top ten. In fact, all seven of the Ram’s runners finished in the top 32 out of the 139 runners that finished the race. It was fifth-year Ben Fleischer who led the way for the Rams, winning the meet outright with a time of 24:45.7 minutes. Fleischer was also the only runner who ran at a sub-five minute pace. This was Fleischer’s second win of the season, and his time was a new personal best for the meet. This record-setting performance from Fleischer led to the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association naming him the best Division I men’s athlete of the week. The USTFCCCA tracks all official meets all over the country, making this award very prestigious.
These accomplishments for Fleischer are a result of all of the hard work and dedication that he has put into the sport over the course of his collegiate career, according to URI coach Brian Doyle. Fleischer has been running around 105 miles a week for a couple months, and that sort of hard work and practice has contributed to building himself up to withstand these long runs week in and week out and this has resulted in some major accomplishments here in his fifth year.
It wasn’t just Fleischer who reached the podium for the Rams. First-year athlete Garrett Hartline placed third with a time of 25:16.8 minutes; that time is a new personal best for Hartline and helped him in being named the Atlantic 10 Rookie of the Week. This was Hartline’s first time reaching the podium at the collegiate level and he traveled a long distance to make it happen for this Rams team. Hartline is a native of Lake Forest, California, which is about 2,552 miles from the URI campus.
While Hartline is pleased about reaching the podium for the first time, he is more focused on the team’s overall success and there was plenty of that at this meet.
“I was way happier with the team performance than my individual performance,” said Hartline.“We ran that as a team trying to get that title and we did it.”
It was a strong performance from the URI team as a whole. Of the 139 runners, all of URI’s scorers finished in the top 32. Rounding out the top ten was Rhode Island’s fourth-year Nathan Masi, finishing with a time of 26:02.9. Masi was a part of the four runners that finished in the top 10 for the Rams – this explains how URI accomplished such a low score compared to the rest of the field. Second place finisher UMass had four of their runners finish within the top 25. No other school had nearly as many at the top of the field.
Hartline is a part of a rather young Rams squad – of the seven runners for the Rams, five are underclassmen. The Rams have benefitted from those underclassmen making an immediate impact. The Rams third best scorer was first-year Nick Martin, who finished sixth with a time of 25:09 minutes. URI’s top placing first-years separated themselves from the rest of their class, as the next closest first-year was Stonehill’s Brayton Garzerro, who finished 17th.
When a team this young has this much success early on, it typically indicates that good things await in their future, at least that’s how Hartline sees it.
“What’s really exciting is thinking about the future of how this team could progress,” Hartline said. “Even after Ben (Fleischer) graduates we still have a very bright future.”
The URI cross country team is made up of 18 runners, and nine are first-year athletes. In just their first semester as a part of URI, they’ve helped the program accomplish something special. Between the track and field team winning in the spring and the cross country team, URI completely swept the New England Championships in 2023.
The next opportunity for the Rams to secure another championship will be on Oct. 28th Saturday when the Rams travel to Cedarville, Ohio for the Atlantic 10 conference championship. In the 45 years of the meet, Rhode Island has never won. Their best finish was back in 1999 when the Rams finished third of the 14 schools participating. Led by a strong core of underclassmen and Fleischer, the Rams have a chance to make history on Saturday.