MADISON, Wis - The Northern Arizona University men's cross country team repeated as the University of Wisconsin's Nuttycombe Invitational Champions in dominating fashion at the Thomas Zimmer Championship Course on Friday.

The Lumberjacks placed three runners in the top five of the meet, and had all five scoring athletes in the top 21 of the race. NAU finished with 50 points, beating the next closest team by 73. It was a 28 point higher finish than the championship performance from a season ago.

"I'm very pleased with the performance today," Director of Cross Country and Track & Field Michael Smith said. "The guys knew what they wanted to do, they knew what the meet meant as far as the plan for the season. They knew this was a real checkmark for us in what we are trying to accomplish this season and a real chance to see how we stacked up against national caliber competition."

Andy Trouard led NAU with a third-place finish with a time of 23:40.9 in the 8K race. Tyler Day was right behind him in fourth (23:41.9) and Matt Baxter was just a hundredth of a second behind him to finish fifth (23:42.0).

Geordie Beamish raced strong and finished in 17th (24:00.4) and Luis Grijalva came in 21st (24:04.8) as the top freshman runner at the event.  

Peter Lomong came in 43rd (24:17.3) while Ryan Wolff rounded things out in 203rd (25:40.0).

"I was even more excited with how we achieved that outcome," Smith said. "We talked the night before about each member of our team doing their part, doing their piece, and that's exactly what we saw today."

"We achieved this outcome through a process that we intended and I think that's the biggest indicator of what's to come," Smith added. "Had we have won the meet, but lost sight of that process, I think we would have some different type of work to do, but I'm really pleased with the way our guys were doing their part and fighting those individual battles out there."

NAU was followed by Portland (123 points), Syracuse (151), Stanford (155) and Furman (157) to round out the top five.

Northern Arizona returns to the course with the running of the Arizona State Invitational on Friday, Oct. 20.

The men will have just three races after ASU's meet; the Big Sky Championships (Saturday, Oct. 28), the NCAA Mountain Regionals (Friday, Nov. 10) and the NCAA Championships (Saturday, Nov. 18).

"We want the team to enjoy the day but we still have a lot of work ahead of us," Smith said. "We got an important next few weeks of training, getting back to work in Flagstaff and we're really looking forward to the NCAA Mountain Regionals and NCAA Championships."