SLIPPERY ROCK — Senior Logan Caruso and sophomore Tyler Kraft placed 11th and 13th respectively to lead Bradford’s Cross country team to a 6th place finish at the Slippery Rock Invitational (in times of 17:47 and 17:53) on Saturday.  

They received solid support from junior Vinnie Bizzarro who took 23rd in 18:30. Freshman Gabe Mitchell placed 53rd in 19:15 while Senior Cade Hayden was 59th in 19:28. Also running were David Allen (115th – 21:52) and Jordan Achar (126th -23:13).  

There were 21 teams and 177 runners, though multiple classes running at the same time made the race numbers swell to 496 runners and over 60 teams.

“Our top five runners did a good job,” Owls coach Tom Tessena said. “Our first three are very consistent with Logan, Tyler and Vinnie. Freshman Gabe Mitchell is getting better each meet and senior Cade Hayden did well today. Cade is far from 100 percent but he gave all he had. I think the next two weeks will give him an opportunity to really help us at Districts. We were missing our regular fourth and fifth men, Isaac Paterniti and Andrew Kraft, but we hope to have them back at Districts. We just haven’t had the whole group together this year but we have persevered with someone stepping up each week. Today was tough to run with all the people and the heat and humidity but I was pleased with our guys’ efforts.”  
Indiana was the team champion while Sam Snodgrass of South Fayette was the individual champion with a time of 16:19.
Bradford’s JV team placed ninth out of 23 teams in a field of 258 runners from all three classes.  Freshmen Ian Paterniti (47th-20:37), Quentin Minard (49th-20:38), Stephen Morgan (51st-20:45), Drake Hayden (66th-21:12) and Devin Benson (88th-22:15) ran well.  Juniors Ethan Hollamby (89th-22:16) and Billy Naglik(90th–22:30) also had good races.
“We now have two weeks to fine tune and get healthy for Districts,” Tessena said. “Anything can happen at that race. We need to run our best and not take anything for granted as Clearfield and Punxsutawney will come after us with their best efforts. We took another step forward today and that must continue.”