Seton Hall University
Hofstra/St. John's Fall Festival
WXC Wins St. John's/Hofstra Fall Festival
9/7/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Cross Country
OAKDALE, N.Y. - The trio of freshman Christiana Rutkowski (Middletown, N.J.), senior Mary Migton (Ledgewood, N.J.) and sophomore Desyre Blackburn (Aloha, Ore.) finished consecutively inside the top-10 on Sunday to lead the Seton Hall women's cross country squad to a landmark team victory at the 5K St. John's/Hofstra Fall Festival.
The Pirates completed the day with 30 team points as all five scorers on the women's side placed among the top-12 overall. The effort helped The Hall finish atop a field that included BIG EAST rival St. John's, Hofstra and NJIT to claim the first team title for Seton Hall since the program transitioned to cross country exclusively.
The freshman Rutkowski has transformed the top of the Pirates' lineup just two weeks into her collegiate career as she has now been the squad's top performer in both meets early in the 2014 campaign. After turning in a fourth-place time at the Monmouth XC Kick Off in her debut, Rutkowski delivered an equally impressive follow up on Sunday; clocking in at 19:35.4 to rank sixth out of 84 total entrants.
For the second-straight week, Migton crossed the line within seconds of Rutkowski, recording a seventh-place time of 19:41.0 that landed her among the team's top-two finishers for the 12th consecutive meet. Blackburn extended her individual scoring streak to 11 by coming in just over 14 seconds later (19:55.5) to occupy eighth-place and wrap up the string of three-consecutive Pirates across the line.
It wouldn't be long before The Hall collected two more finishers to round out the victorious scoring group. Running in tandem, freshman Bailey Seach (Winston Salem, N.C.) and junior Amanda Quaglia (Reading, Pa.) crossed the line within four-tenths of a second of each other to earn 11th and 12th-place finishes respectively.
Seach - who has also now been among the Pirates' top-five in the Pirates' first two outings of fall - turned in a time of 20:21.6 while Quaglia clocked in at 20:22.0 for her fifth-straight scoring effort.
The average time of Seton Hall's top-five finishers was over 14 seconds faster than that of a runner-up St. John's squad who finished with 41 points.
Over the first two weeks, the Seton Hall women have been paced by the same group of five competitors while freshman Emily Johnson (Wildwood Crest, N.J.) has twice finished sixth on the team. Johnson registered a 17th-place finish on Sunday, completing the course in 20:42.2 to give The Hall six top-20 finishers.
With the victory in the books, The Hall will look to continue its winning form at next Saturday's Delaware Invitational. Start-time is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. from Newark, Del.
