ANNVILLE, Pa.-Faraz Shoai ran 29:55.56 over 8,000 meters to become the first-ever Hood College male to break 30:00 for distance at Saturday's Lebanon Valley College Cross Country Invitational. Kelly Buriak paced the eighth-place women's team, out of 21 teams, by finishing 24th overall (22nd in team scoring). The men finished 14th overall.

Officially, Shoai finished the 8,050-meter course officially in 30:06.78, good for 50th overall (45th in team scoring). However, he passed through the shorter distance in the new school record time. His performance breaks the previous school record held by Steve Delaney of 31:14.

"Faraz was very disciplined on a hot day, over a rolling course," said coach Brent Ayer. "He was right at 5:55 to 6:00 each mile. I think he'll be able to dip this into the 28-minute range once we start quality in about four weeks. My hope is to have Faraz, Bryan (Lentz, 83rd team scorer), and Steve (88th) all under 30:00 by mid-October."

On the women's side, Buriak was followed by a pair of freshman, Danielle Sgro and Kyleigh Reynolds.

"Kelly finished slightly out of the medals for the second week, but seemed to run with more confidence," Ayer said. "Danielle established a new 5,000-meter record for freshmen in out-leaning fellow frosh Kyleigh by 39-hundreds of a second. They finished 36th and 37th in the team scoring, respectively."

"Kyleigh continues to surprise," Ayer continued. "She is now almost two minutes under her season goal and she is running smart, negative-split races."

Senior captain Rachel Collmus (53rd) and sophomore April Penn (65th) rounded out the team scoring.

Craig Callender (93rd) and Faizal Johnson also ran well for the men.