PRINCETON, N.J. – Junior Dillon Farrell of the Moravian College men's cross country team is officially in a league of his own in the Greyhound record books.
Farrell broke his own school record in the 8,000-meter distance with a time of 24:35 at the Princeton University Invitational on Saturday morning. He finished 28th out of 272 harriers at Princeton, and beat his previous school record of 24:44 by nine seconds after setting the mark on the same course in 2012.
"I was pretty happy," Farrell said. "It was a little off of what my original goal was, which was about 15 seconds faster than what I ran. It was a huge field today that got funneled into a really tight space. If you weren't in the right spot in the first half-mile of the race, you got jammed up."
The junior admitted he was excited to drop time off the school record, but the celebration was brief because it was part of his expectations for this season. Farrell hopes this is not the last time he can shatter his own record.
"It's nice to know I'm not getting worse," Farrell said with a laugh. "A lot of athletes come out of high school and plateau. Just knowing that I'm getting better is good enough for me, whether or not it's my record or someone else's."
Head coach Jesse Baumann echoed the notion that today's time was par for the course, and truly the beginning of the rest of Farrell's cross country career.
"This was a good checkpoint before hopefully realizing some of his higher aspirations at regionals and nationals later this year," Baumann said. "It's a good attitude to have for both of us, to never be satisfied, even with a school record. From a coach's standpoint, you love to see that in an athlete."
The Moravian men finished in 28th of the 30 schools competing at the event, which hosted a number of top-notch NCAA Division I programs.
Junior Alec Duncan finished in 165th with a time of 26:25, beating a personal record Duncan set last season at Princeton by five seconds in the 8K.
Cory Taggert (27:24), Jeremy Rigotti (27:59) and Maxwell Korten (28:40) rounded out the top-five finishers for the Greyhounds.
"We're still not where we need to be, but we had a big pickup from last week," Baumann said. "We dropped minutes off our times from the Paul Short Run two weeks ago, so there were good strides today."
Andrew Mitchell and Andrew Reed also competed for Moravian at Princeton.
The Greyhounds return to the trails on Saturday, Nov. 2 at the Landmark Conference Championships at The Catholic University of America. The race is scheduled to start at noon.
