Men’s and women’s cross country Kick-Off anticipates a successful season

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A sea of Mocs in white infiltrate the pack. | Photo courtesy of FSC Athletics

Caroline Bryant
Editor-in-Chief

Florida Southern College’s men’s and women’s cross country took No. 1 and No. 2 at the Holloway Collegiate XC Opener Sept. 6 on their home turf.

All-South Region juniors held their own in this race, with Christian Giller leading the pack to take second overall in the 6k. His outstanding performance earned him the SSC Weekly Award for Sept. 2-8. Mocs XC Kick-Off. Christopher Colavita followed in third, as Caleb Brady found himself right outside of the top 10, placing 11th.

For the women’s 4.2k, senior and 2023 SSC Co-Runner of the Year Emma Musante captured the No. 2 spot with a 15:17 performance. Graduate student and three-time All-South Region athlete Ellie Fluman finished 15:28 to earn 7th, while senior Mya Stam finished in the No. 11 spot, respectively.

With the first meet out of the way, both teams are preparing for what they hope to be dramatic seasons this fall.

Men’s Cross Country

Chris Colavita reaches over the finish line for third place. | Photo courtesy of FSC Athletics

Ranked No. 1 in the 2024 SSC Coaches’ Preseason Poll, No. 3 in the South Region and No. 26 in the nation, the Mocs have big shoes to fill. While they’re missing key graduates who heavily supported the team’s success at the NCAA II National Championships (Owen Allen, Alex Guy and Bryson Yamnitz), Men’s Cross Country Coach Matt Levassuir is confident the team will persevere.

“It’s going to be difficult for sure,” Levassuir said in an interview with FSC Athletics. “It’s going to be you know what we have. We have a couple of transfers that are guys that I recruited in high school that have come back to me since … and then we brought in some really good freshmen. You know, when you return, you may lose three of your top six, but if you return 17 of your top 20, you’re in pretty good shape.”

Levassuir says to keep an eye out for the “big three” juniors returning this season: Giller, Colavita and Anthony Matthew. Promising sophomores include Dylan Bailey, Connor Brooks, Will Canales, Cameron Raney, Cole Summers and Declan Ziomek – who set the freshman cross country 10k record at regionals which secured the Mocs’ spot at nationals in 2023.

The main goal for the year is to repeat as conference champions and reach for a regional championship. To increase their chances of doing so, Levassuir organized an unorthodox race schedule, competing a lot outside of the region.

“We’re going to go out of region to get some cross competition to help boost our chances in the event that were not in the top three in regionals so we can get in that large spot,” Levassuir told FSC Athletics. “But aside from the mathematical element, just giving our teams a chance to compete against other programs from other parts of the country just makes things better to give a way to challenge us. When you see the same people, you kind of expect the same things…”

However, he is more focused on approaching each race individually. Levassuir strives to keep his runners healthy to “[build] up our volume and our intensity so that we’re going to be able to peak at the right time.” 

Women’s Cross Country

Emma Musante leads the pack at the Holloway Collegiate XC Opener. | Photo courtesy of FSC Athletics

Like the men’s team, the Lady Mocs were polled No. 3 in the South Region, but sit No. 4 in the  2024 SSC Coaches’ Preseason Poll. The team is motivated to claim a spot at the NCAA II Cross Country Nationals after earning fifth place at the NCAA South Regional Championships last year.

According to the FSC Athletics, their No. 5 spot was their highest rank at that meet since 2019. 

“I would say I think we had a really good pack last season, we definitely had some strong freshmen coming in,” Fluman said in an interview with FSC Athletics. “That definitely helped us, we had a lot of freshmen in our top 10, so that was awesome. Then we won the Montevallo Falcon Classic which again was very awesome, our first time winning in a very long time.”

With such improvement, Musante told FSC Athletics that she’s eager to see how the pack pushes for success now that they have “fire under their butts.”

“I think we have a little bit of fire under our butts,” Musante said. “I think we kind of have some big goals of what we can do at conference and regionals, coming off of a year where we thought we could’ve done better at conference. I think we can really work hard this year to do even better at conference than we did the previous year.”

Considering the strong freshmen class, return of last years’ top seven and their confidence boost from regionals, the path to nationals is looking clearer. 

“It’s really exciting that we’re returning every single one of our top seven, not every team is able to do that,” Musante said. “What is even more exciting is our eight, nine and 10, even the ones that are outside of the top seven are all so close, so that really bridges the gap between a lot of other teams, as well. That’s a really strong point of our team.”

This fall, students will have two more chances to catch both teams in action at Holloway Park: The Ed Holloway Collegiate XC Classic on Oct. 18 and the conference championship co-hosted with Nova Southeastern the following week.

Results from the Southern Showcase at Jackson State University on Sept. 13 were unavailable when publication was put online.

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