PALATINE, Ill. - The Ashford University men's cross country team turned in a strong performance in their opening meet.

However, they weren't able to overcome last year's JUCO national champions, event host Harper College, finishing in second at the Harper College Invitational. Harper placed five runners in the top six, winning team and individual honors.

Yet despite the second place finish, Head Coach Tyson Graham was pleased with the way his team performed in a meet that featured one of the best teams in the nation.

"Whenever you have a team like that (Harper) you know it's going to be stiff competition," said Graham. "Not to mention they were competing at home on top of that. But despite the quality in competition our guys were facing, I feel like we ran a quality first short race."

The Saints were led by freshman Alex Gonzales, who broke up Harper's bid to finish the three-mile race with a perfect score, finishing his first career race in fourth place with a time of 16:26. Sophomore Brian Meyer also ran a strong race, finishing in seventh place with a time of 16:43.

Freshman Tyler Randolph (12th place/17:13), junior Ray Rivera (15th place/17:30), senior Doug Powers (23rd/18:28), freshman Zach Pavlich (25th/19:12) junior Aleksander Jakobsen (32nd/21:00) and sophomore Andrew Sharp (34th/23:04) rounded out the results for the Saints.

The meet was a chance for some of the Saints' younger runners to get their feet wet, and afterwards, Graham noted that there were both some positives and some things the team still needs to work on.

"We have some quality upper classman with a mixture of underclassman that makes for an interesting dynamic," said Graham."We have to be smarter in the early miles, that was our one downfall this week, but being a first meet of the season that's expected. But much like the women, everyone contributed and I feel like we're going to be able to compete next week and the rest of this season."

After a week of training, the Saints men's team will be in action on Saturday, Sept. 3 at the Waubonsee Invitational in Sugar Grove, Ill. at 10:00 am.