Last Saturday, the men's cross country team placed 16th out of 32 teams and third among five UAA schools at the NCAA Division III Championships at Wartburg College.The Judges' effort was spearheaded by Paul Norton '11, who came in 70th overall. Norton finished less than a second behind the three runners ahead of him and cut his time from last year down by 20 seconds, though he did finish seventh at last year's meet.

Chris Brown '12 was Brandeis' second place runner and placed 94th with a time of 25 minutes and 25.3 seconds.

Brown said that the team was happy with their result. "We all did really well . It was a good final meet, he said."

Marc Boutin '12 finished third on the team with a time of 25:29.2 and came in 107th overall. Boutin ran 80 seconds faster than in 2009.

Kerwin Vega '11 and Devon Holgate '11 finished 138th and 152nd, respectively. Vega improved his time by over 120 seconds from last year, while Holgate sliced 40 seconds off his time.

Ed Colvin '14 and Dan Anastos '11 finished in 161st and 197th place, respectively.

Boutin said that he thinks that the runners' individual placements were not necessarily indicative of how well they ran.

"The thing about Nationals is . [Brown] was in 94th place and I literally was 4 seconds behind him in what I thought was a few places but there was actually 13 people in between the two of us," he said. "So I thought I did better than 107th but then I looked at the results and it said that I was farther back than I thought I was."

When asked about the team's performance, Boutin said that he was pleased with the meet.

"I think we all ran really well as a team. We just ran together and we were able to put together a performance that was one of our best in the past three years that we've gone to Nationals," he said.