LEBANON, Pa. – The Lebanon Valley women's cross country team had a strong start to the season on Saturday morning as the Dutchmen finished third out of 19 scoring teams at the 51st annual Dutchmen Invitational at Union Canal Tunnel Park.
 
"This was a really strong start from our women's team," Head Coach James O'Brien stated about the performance. "I was very impressed by the big jumps from many of our returning individuals as well as the strong pack of our newcomers. The addition of our first-years has really filled out a lack of depth that we've had in the past. This was a proper early-season checkpoint against some really good teams and I'm excited to see what we can do with a little more work."
 
The Dutchmen placed three runners in the top 20 of a large field that had 186 collegiate finishers. Coyla Bartholomew had a great race and finished second with a 5,000-meter career-best time of 18:24.2. She was just two seconds back of Moravian University's Tara Smurla who ran 18:22.7. Autumn Garges finished fifth with a great career-best time of 18:42.8. Abigail Hunt was the third Dutchman in the top 20 with a career-best time of 19:34.7 to finish 16th. Charlee Kurtz finished 33rd with a career-best time of 20:16.6 as the fourth LVC finisher while Kaylee Senglar rounded out the top five scorers with a time of 20:25.0 to finish 41st. Another first-year, Christine Wagner was 56th with a time of 21:12.2 while Aleah Hoffman was the seventh Dutchman to finish in 21:12.7.

University of Scranton won the team title with 64 points. Moravian was second with 84 points and the Dutchmen were third with 95 points. Widener University finished fourth with 146 points and Ursinus College was fifth with 160 points.
 
LVC Finishers

PL	Name	Avg. Mile	Time	Score
2	Coyla Bartholomew	05:55.4	18:24.2	2
5	Autumn Garges	06:01.4	18:42.8	5
16	Abigail Hunt	06:18.0	19:34.7	16
33	Charlee Kurtz	06:31.4	20:16.1	33
41	Kaylee Senglar	06:34.2	20:25.0	39
56	Christine Wagner	06:49.4	21:12.2	49
58	Aleah Hoffman	06:49.6	21:12.7	51
60	Caroline Borleis	06:50.1	21:14.2
62	Madison Eroh	06:51.9	21:20.0
66	Grace Kauffman	06:54.5	21:27.9
92	Nina Milosevic	07:09.1	22:13.4
106	Dani Fetterolf	07:18.7	22:43.0
110	Dashira Almodovar Pena	07:21.2	22:50.9
122	Madison Sneath	07:34.0	23:30.8
136	Ciara Millan	07:51.1	24:23.8
163	Alex Janner	08:40.5	26:57.4
166	Brooke Eberhard	09:07.6	28:21.6

Up Next
The Dutchmen will be off from competition for a few weeks before returning to action on September 28 for the Long/Short Invitational hosted by Dickinson College at Big Spring High School in Newville.

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