Nov. 14, 2009
Results | Photo Gallery 
PRINCESS ANNE, Md. - Guided by Andrew Hanko's (Jr./Montville, N.J.) 13th-place performance among 197 runners, the Navy men's cross country team landed in fourth place among 28 teams at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Region Championship at Maryland Eastern Shore on Saturday afternoon.
No. 15 Georgetown won the team title with 38 points, followed by No. 20 Villanova's 48 points in second place. Both the Hoyas and the Wildcats earned an automatic bid to the NCAA Championship on Nov. 23 in Terre Haute, Ind.
St. Joseph's placed third with a team tally of 181 points, 20 fewer than Navy's 201 points for fourth place. The Midshipmen, who came into the meet ranked fourth in the region, edged fifth-place La Salle, who accumulated 203 points.
"The mud took the milers out of their race today," stated Navy head coach Al Cantello. "It was a race of attrition."
Hanko earned All-Mid-Atlantic Region honors for the second year in a row, as he completed the 10k course in 32:16.4 - 34.4 seconds behind individual champion Andrew Bumbalough from Georgetown. With the top-four runners not associated with the top-two teams earning an automatic bid as an individual to the NCAA Championship, Hanko's time landed him fifth among that group. The Navy junior finished 5.1 seconds behind Princeton's Rob Speare, who rounded out the automatic bid contingent, but still has a shot to claim one of the nation's two individual at-large selections for the national championship.
James Pearson (So./Bloomfield Hills, Mich.) joined Hanko on the all-region team by virtue of his 23rd-place time of 32:43.4.
Matthew De Villers (Jr./Menomonee Falls, Wis.) finished 38th with a time of 33:12.7, followed by Cody Rome's (So./Eagle, Idaho) 66th-place clocking of 33:59.2 and Dean Black's (Fr./Colorado Springs, Colo.) 67th-place time of 24:02.4 to round out Navy's scoring five.
