BOSTON  - Juniors Nick Watts (Pittsfield, NH) and Svea Dellea-Messner (Windham, NH) paced their respective squads as the Southern New Hampshire University men's and women's cross country teams competed at the New England Championships at Franklin Park Saturday afternoon.  The men's squad placed 39th overall, while the women's team finished 43rd.

Watts completed the 8K course in a time of 28 minutes, 16 seconds, good for 184th out of 291 runners.  The next finisher for the Penmen was Alex Brown (Hudson, NH), who finished two seconds behind Watts for 189th.  Spencer Rennick (Peabody, MA) was next at 30:38, followed by Sam Tarrant (Cleverdale, NY) at 32:01.  Rounding out the SNHU finishers were Mike Smith (Lynnfield, MA) (32:49) and Matt Caredeo (Salem, NH) (34:27).

In the women's race, Dellea-Messner finished the 5K course in 22:36 to post a 265th place finish.  Margaret Shields (Smithfield, RI) was next with a 22:52 effort, followed by Melissa Hurley (Ashaway, RI) (24:00), Amanda Soares (Woburn, MA) (24:57) and Emily Smith (Needham, MA) (33:38).

SNHU returns to action October 21 at the Northeast-10 Conference championship hosted by Stonehill College.