Men’s cross country isn’t exactly the premier program at Quinnipiac. Not at a school where the men’s hockey team is fresh off a national championship and the women’s cross country team is poised to successfully defend their MAAC title. The athletes know that. Head coach David Scrivines knows that. That doesn’t mean the Bobcats are going to roll over and die.
“We feel like we have something to prove,” Scrivines said. “We’ve got three seniors on this team, guys that are in really good shape looking forward to the season. We have some other returners that feel like the results last year were OK, but we feel they can be a lot better.”
Quinnipiac probably will not contend for a MAAC championship. It has finished eighth or lower in each of the last four conference meets and was picked No. 9 in the preseason coaches’ poll. Regardless, the Bobcats are calling their shot at moving up in the ranks.
“I think we’re going to beat (No. 8) Fairfield for sure,” senior Nolan Kus said. “(No. 6) Manhattan has to watch out for us and I think (No. 7) Mount St. Mary’s also has to watch out for us because if we put it all together on the day of MAACs, I think we can beat both of those teams as well.”
If the Bobcats are to beat those three teams, they’ll need to do it without their two best runners in 2022.
Cam Starr and Kevin Carballo, who finished 51st and 85th in last year’s conference championship meet, both graduated, leaving major holes to fill this season.
“Cam was a really good one and a great team guy,” Scrivines said. “Performance wise and all that sort of stuff, nobody is going to run the times that he’s running.”
The name of the game for Quinnipiac is depth, which it feels like it has despite only having a seven-man roster, down from 10 a year ago.
“With scoring, it’s about where we are one through five, one through six, one through seven,” Scrivines said. “We feel like we’re deeper this year, even though we don’t have that guy out front like we had Cam last year.”
That’s not stopping the Bobcats from attempting to take the next step and match that output. Kus, who was Quinnipiac’s top finisher at the Stony Brook Season Opener on Saturday, said he wants to break 15 minutes in the 5K and 25:30 in the 8K, marks that would put him near or below Starr’s personal bests in the events.
“I feel like we have a lot of upperclassmen who are ready to step into roles similar to what Cam did,” Kus said. “And instead of it being one top guy, I feel like we can all work together and be up there.”
Kus singled out many in the Bobcats lineup as breakout candidates, including junior Keegan Metcalfe, freshman Michael Strain and senior Andrew Woodbine, who he said has been “working his tail off.”
Success is not going to come overnight for Quinnipiac, but Scrivines and his group understand how this season acts as a puzzle piece to a much bigger picture and a brighter future in the results column for the distance program in Hamden.
“For us, it’s just about making improvement and we want the general overall trajectory of the program going up,” Scrivines said. “We think that even though we have a lot of work to do, we’re headed in the right direction.”
