For the first time in thirty five years (and only the second third time ever), men’s cross country reigns supreme in the Ivy League. The team won today’s Heptagonal Championships by only one point over Princeton, in the closest finish since 1982. Brendan Martin (5th), Kyle Merber (8th), Terrence Prial (12th), Justin Heck (15th), and Anthony Merra (20th) provided the winning top five for the Lions. 

On the women’s side, Columbia finished third behind Harvard and Princeton, with Jackie Drouin and Julie Quinn finishing 8th and 10th respectively. The teams next compete on November 14th in the NCAA Northeast Regionals.

Photo: Columbia University Athletics

What are your travel plans for the summer? All proud of the money you saved to travel to the country/continent of your dreams? Well, Ryan Johns CC ’09 will see your trip and raise you: he’s traveling across Europe, and staying in shape!

Yes, Johns, a former cross country team member, is running across Europe.”I intend to average about 20 miles a day,” he says on the trip’s website. “As a collegiate runner, I find myself frequently running around a hundred miles a week…yet every morning I wake up in the same place. I want to try running something other than loops for a while. I like to travel, why not put this free transportation to some good?” A wonderfully logical answer.

Johns will return to hitting the books (grad school in architecture) next year; in the meantime, you can follow his trip on his blog, which appears to be updated almost daily, and covers such important topics as shin splints and trespassing brewery grounds (photo from Johns’s Flickr photostream).

- JCD

You read the title correctly – sports coverage on Bwog. Stop pointing at the pigs above us. We know they’re there.

With the start of a new school year, we felt it was time to turn over a new leaf in the Bwog-sports relationship. In the past, we’ve generally only reported on sports either as champions or, more often, as a punchline. There are hundreds of our classmates practicing day after day, though, and there’s a lot of great stuff to cover in their efforts. We’ll be doing our best to give them some coverage, and we ask that you do your best to help us in our occasional ignorance at the intricacies of some of the less well-known sports. On to the what’s up this week in the land of sport.

Football: The Lions open their season tomorrow at home against Fordham. The teams have split the last two games, with coach Norries Wilson winning his debut 37-7 in 2006, but then losing in 2007 27-10. To win, the Lions will have to do better on the ground, both on offense with the running back duo of senior Jordan Davis and junior Ray Rangel, and from the whole defense, which gave up 353 yards last year against Fordham.

Unfortunately, the team may be without junior wide reciever Austin Knowlin (led the team with 988 yards and 11 TDs in 2007) and junior linebacker Drew Quinn (second in tackles in 2007) – both have been left off of the starting lineup in the media guide. For a more in-depth preview of the team and the rest of the Ivy League, the Spec has a football supplement.

Read more…