DARTMOUTH, Mass.—Graduate student Anthony Rodriguez (Prairie View, Ill.) finished in 12th place among 343 runners to lead the Babson College men's cross country team to a ninth place finish among 44 schools at the rainy UMass Dartmouth Invitational on Saturday.

Babson finished with a team score of 310, one spot behind WPI (225) and ahead of Merrimack (345). The Beavers were the second-best scoring Division III team behind WPI as Division I programs took the top seven places, led by Boston University (22), Brown (103) and UMass Lowell (163) in the top three spots.

Rodriguez posted a time of 25:19 on the Robert Dowd 8K course, the 15th fastest 8K time in program history and his third best, particularly impressive given the rainy and muddy conditions. Senior Julian Ivarra (Plano, Texas) was the next Babson competitor across the line, finishing in 34th place in 25:48, and first-year Nick Yacoub (Sharon, Mass.) was 61st in 26:11.

First-year Sam Zabbo (Warwick, R.I.) and graduate student Matthew Campbell (South Easton, Mass.) rounded out the scorers for Babson, Zabbo placing 110th in 26:55 and Campbell in 127th in 27:11. Sophomore Almond Nickerson (Darien, Conn.) finished in 27:30, classmate John Hanscom (Hadley, Mass.) crossed the line in 27:31, and fellow sophomore Brian Gall (Norwalk, Conn.) came across in 27:39.

Babson will send its top runners to the Division III Pre-Nationals on October 4 in Terre Haute, Indiana, the site of the NCAA Division III National Championships in November. The rest of the Beavers will run at the Keene State Invitational on October 5.