Matt Denton, a senior from Cinnaminson, ran an all-course PR and placed 25th out of 178 runners to help Haverford win the NCAA Division 3 Metro Region Championships Saturday.
Denton was Haverford’s 5th runner in a wild five-team finish that saw Haverford, Rowan, The College of New Jersey, Moravian and DeSales all finish within 22 points of each other.
Denton, from Cinnaminson, ran 25:40.7 over the 8,000-meter course at DREAM Park in Logan Township. His previous 8,000-meter PR on any course was 25:57.8 at D-3 pre-nationals in October in Newville, Pa., on the course that will be used for the Division 3 Championships next Saturday.
Haverford earned the one auto bid to NCAA Division 3 Nationals by edging Rowan 78-84, with TCNJ 3rd with 91, then Moravian with 98 and DeSales 100.
Denton finished one place ahead of Rowan’s 4th runner and two places ahead of Rowan’s 5th runner. If Denton ran three seconds slower, Rowan would have won the team title, 80-84.
There will be 22 at-large teams selected from among the non-winning teams in the 10 Division 3 regions. Those teams will be announced Sunday.
Haverford, Rowan, TCNJ, DeSales and Moravian are ranked 1 through 5 in the most recent USTCCCA Metro Region rankings, so the only deviation from the rankings was Moravian bumping DeSales.
Rowan’s 2nd finisher was Joshua Cason, a junior from Camden County Vo-Tech. Cason placed 9th in 25:07.0. Shane Vostenak of Bishop Eustace was the Profs’ 3rd finisher in 18th place overall in 25:35.5.
Rowan ran a very smart team race, going out slowly early and finishing strong. At the mile, the Profs trailed Haverford by over 100 points [35-144], at three miles they still trailed by more than 50 [44-95] and they were still 28 points down with just under half a mile to go [62-90]. But they made up a ton of ground late in the race and almost pulled off the upset.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 