The Bruins stayed close to home this morning as they competed in the Furman Invite. In the past, the Furman Invite has been a 6 kilometer race (3.7 miles), but this year it was extended to be a 4 mile race for both the women and men.

The women's team raced first with a 9:00 a.m. starting gun. Even with the longer distance than normal, the team stayed strong and leaned on each other throughout the whole race. Lauren Jones led the Bruins again as she has in the first two races. Coming in 47th place overall, she finished with a time of 27:34. Kristen Dodds stuck with Jones for quite some time, and came in second for the Bruins at 28:35 and 51st overall. Lillian Strange and Hannah Cohen ran side-by-side the whole race. Strange was able to out-kick her teammate to finish at 28:55 and Cohen came shortly after at 29:00. Cora Gagne was not too far behind to round out the top five for the Bruins at 29:47. Two places later came Liz Farley to finish the Bruins strong efforts today at 30:02. The women's team placed seventh out of nine teams.

The men's race began at 9:45. Going up against some of the countries top running talent on Furman and Clemson, the Bruins stayed calm and raced a good race. Their team goal going into the race was to beat four teams and they everything to meet that goal. Judah Nash, the freshman, led the Bruins again with a great time of 21:30. Joel Batres-Mena and James Baer came back-to-back through the finish line at 22:20 and 22:39. Daniel Kyle and Levi Gerbitz came through the finish line in the same fashion a little bit later at 23:33 and 23:35 to finish the top five for the Bruins. It was the push from freshmen Mathew Carver and Jacob Doshier that helped the Bruins meet their team goal. Since they finished over the sixth runner for Gardner-Webb, it pushed the Bruins to finish sixth out of 10 teams. Carver came in at 24:09 and Doshier at 24:19. To close the Bruins race, Luke VanDenBerghe finished at 25:11 with Harold Wood coming through at 27:17. 

Full results for the Furman Invite came be found here.

The Bruins will be on the course again on Friday, September 19 at the Brevard XC Classic.