TOWSON, Md. --- The Moravian College women's cross country squad has been selected to finish second in the 2018 Landmark Conference Preseason Poll voted on by the conference coaches.
The Greyhounds garnered 60 points and a pair of first place votes in the poll while defending Landmark Conference Champion Elizabethtown College was picked first in the poll with 66 points and five first-place votes. Susquehanna University received the final first-place vote.
Director of Cross Country and Track & Field Jesse Baumann is set to start his eighth season leading the Hounds and has 13 returning runners junior Katie Mayer and sophomore Grace Gilbert , who both earned Landmark All-Conference Second Team accolades a year ago with Gilbert finishing 12th at the 2017 Landmark Championships and Mayer one spot back in 13th place.
"Juniata had a great spring season, especially Collado and Kalil but they had good depth and should be a strong team," Baumann said. "E-Town lost a lot of seniors, but they still have some All-Region talent coming back, a few good freshmen and a big impact transfer so those two will be particularly difficult to challenge by October. However, this is the deepest team we've had in my time here with 14 who broke 6:00 in our mile time trial. Katie, junior Carly Danoski and Grace figure to be up there in our top 5, sophomore Molly Talarico came back in excellent shape and is healthy, and then we have an exceptionally deep pack of runners who can step up on any given day. I think we'll have a lot of runners who will break 24:00, but the challenge is getting some of them to contend farther up for All-Conference if we want to have a shot at winning in October because teams like Scranton, ETown, and Juniata will certainly have some runners well at the front of the pack."
The Greyhounds are slated to start their 2018 campaign on Friday, August 31 at the Bulldog Invitational being hosted by DeSales University with race time set for 6:00 p.m.
To view the entire 2018 Landmark Conference Preseason Poll, visit http://landmarkconference.org/sports/xc/2018-19/releases/08282018-wxc-preseason-poll.
