ST. LOUIS, MO – The Principia cross country team opened their 2025 campaign on Friday by traveling down to Buder Park in southwest St. Louis to race in Webster's season opening meet. The SLIAC conference meet will be held at Buder Park in early November, so this was a good chance to preview the course as well as run against five other conference schools.
Since this was every team's first meet of the season, the men and women each ran a little shorter than their usual race distances – the men running 6K instead of 8K, and the women running 5K instead of 6K.
The Panthers had nine runners in the men's race and ended up finishing second overall (first among SLIAC teams). Principia's top four of senior
Zach Proctor, sophomore
Holland Thomas, junior
Kennett Rampley, and freshman
Amos Ostler ran the first half of the race in a pack before breaking it open in the second half.
Proctor finished 5th overall with a time of 21:42 and went on to be named SLIAC Men's Runner of the Week. Thomas also had a strong first race and finished only 11 seconds later in 8th place. Rampley and Ostler raced each other to the finish and crossed the line less than a second apart in 14th and 15th. Freshman
Mark Nutwell outkicked his brother Aaron to round out Principia's top five in 26th place.
Principia only had four runners in the women's race, which was not enough to get a team score, but all four women ran well. The Panthers top three of senior
Sophia Green, sophomore
Nina Martinez, and freshman
Danielle Vargas all finished in the top 12 with senior
Sarah Erickson not far behind in 21st. Green led the way finishing 6th overall with a time of 22:52 in her first ever college cross country race.
Next up, the team will head to SIUE campus next Saturday for WashU's Gabby Reuveni Invitational beginning at 8:00 am.
