KENOSHA, WI - The Lake Forest College Men's and Women's Cross Country Teams opened their season Saturday (September 2nd) along with the Milwaukee School of Engineering at the Carthage Triangular.

After the rain and lightning cleared the women started the day with a 2-mile race. As they have for nearly every race during the last two years, seniors Sarah Simpson (Colorado Springs, CO/Palmer) and Michelle Murillo (Des Plaines/Maine West) were the top two finishers for the Foresters, completing the course in 13:23 (7th place) and 13:34 (8th), respectively. In their first collegiate races, sophomore Erin Motzer (Libertyville, IL/Libertyville) and freshman Shana Gearty (Jamaica Plain, MA/Boston Latin) finished 10th and 13th, respectively. Sophomores Melissa Brown (Cape Coral, FL/Cape Coral) finished 18th, Molly Sutherland (St. Paul, MN/Visitation) 19th and Kat McCauley (Golden Valley, MN/St. John's) 20th to complete the team's top seven.

Carthage won the women's race with 23 points, followed by Lake Forest with 52 and MSOE with 56.

In the men's 5K, the Foresters were led by juniors Joe Zemaitis (Scottsdale AZ/Horizon) and Charles Evans (Asheville, NC/Asheville) with times of 17:06 (6th place) and 17:14 (7th), respectively. Sophomores Eric Crawley (Braintree, MA/Thayer) finished 9th, Rob Bahde (Plainfield, IL/Plainfield) 14th and Brandon Johnson (Phoenix, AZ/Brophy) 16th to round out the scoring for the Foresters

Carthage was victorious in the men's race as well with 20 points. Lake Forest was second with 40, folowed by MSOE with 50.

Head Coach Mike Wajerski was extremely pleased with some performances in particular.  "On the women's side, Erin [Motzer] ran extremely well in her first race ever, starting out conservatively and moving up as the race went on. In future meets she and most of her teammates need to be a little more aggressive from the start and then still finish strong in the end.  It was also nice to see Charles [Evans] back after he missed all of last year with a broken foot.  He and most of the other guys really piled up some mileage over the summer and are way ahead of where they were last year."