Lions finish the regular season with new record times at Royals Cross Country Challenge
The Mars Hill men's cross country team ran an extremely strong team average of 25:46 to finish 6th place of 21 NCAA Division II teams and placed 9th of 37 teams overall at the Royals XC Challenge, hosted at McAlpine Creek Park in Charlotte, North Carolina on Friday evening over the 8k race distance.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The Mars Hill men's cross country team finished an extremely strong 6th place of 21 NCAA Division II teams and placed 9th of 37 teams overall at the Royals XC Challenge, hosted at McAlpine Creek Park in Charlotte, North Carolina on Friday evening over the 8k race distance. The men finished with a team average time of 25:46 over the 8k distance, tying them for the 4th fastest team time in Mars Hill history.
The men's team worked together throughout the entire race to finish with new personal records for the entire top seven. The Lions were led up front by Sean Sanchez and Justin Owens in times of 25:22 and 25:25. Following closely behind was freshman DJ Chadwell in 25:42 and sophomores Matthew O'Connor and Brandon McNulty, both finishing in a time of 26:11. Hot on their heels was sophomore Eli Taylor with a time of 26:24 and Braxton Cummings finishing in a time of 26:39. This is a tight top five split of 49 seconds which displays the team strength of the Lions.
Rounding out the 2025 regular season, sophomore Sean Sanchez, grad student Justin Owens, and freshman DJ Chadwell have etched their names on the vaunted Mars Hill Men's Cross Country All-Time 8k leaderboard in positions 11, 12, and 18 respectively. Freshman DJ Chadwell moves his name higher on the Mars Hill Men's Cross Country Freshman 8k leaderboard as the 3rd fastest freshman in school history.
Thoughts from Coach Benge:
"The men displayed another great example of working off each other yet again this evening with the six runners being very close throughout the race and finishing with only a minute split between them. Excellent pacing allowed the men to move up throughout the race and beat multiple teams ranked in the Top 10 in the Southeast Region and finish with the 4th fastest team average in Mars Hill men's cross country history. This is a huge accomplishment considering some of the excellent national qualifying teams of the past 30 years. With an incredibly young team like this, I continue to be excited about the team's success both this year and for the coming years as we continue to progress! Congrats to Sean, Justin, and DJ for huge runs to vault them onto the all-time leaderboard and to DJ for the 3rd fastest freshman run in Mars Hill history! With huge personal records throughout the team, the men are obviously in great shape and will look to carry this momentum forward to the South Atlantic Conference Championship in two weeks!"
To view the full list of times, please click here.
The Mars Hill men's cross country team next competes at the South Atlantic Conference Championship on Saturday, October 25th. That race is being held in Greeneville, Tennessee and is set for a 9 a.m. start.
