TOWSON, Md. --- Moravian University senior Shane Houghton has been named the Landmark Conference Men's Cross Country Runner of the Week for his performance last week.

Houghton was the first runner to complete the 6,000-meter course at the Moravian Invitational hosted by the Greyhounds last Friday evening at Bicentennial Park as a preview of the 2021 Landmark Conference Championship course. He finished in a time of 19:03.3 to place first of the 94 runners.

"Both as a team and individually, we wanted to use this race to work on competing better, feeding off of what our competitors were doing, and then responding," stated Director of Track & Field and Cross Country Jesse Baumann. "Shane did just that, letting everyone else dictate the pace early on, and then once he went into the back loop after the mile mark he was feeling really strong and didn't want to leave the race to a chance kick at the end. He slowly increased the pace and incrementally built up to a lead of nearly 75m by the 3-mile mark which he was able to maintain until the end. He felt really comfortable throughout the race, and we feel he has a shot at maintaining the same pace when we get to an 8K either at Paul Short or the meet down at Rowan in the middle of October. He put in a tremendous workload all summer long, and it's clearly paying off now."

The Greyhounds are slated to return to the course on Saturday, September 25 when the squad runs its first 8K of the year at the Osprey Open hosted by Stockton (N.J.) University.