CENTER VALLEY, PA. -- The Gwynedd Mercy Men's Cross Country Team wrapped up their 2016 season in Saturday's NCAA Division III Mideast Regional hosted by DeSales. The Griffins as a team placed 46th overall.

Matt Brown was the top finisher for GMercyU, clocking in at 27:54 on the 8k course, to finish in 182nnd place. The race featured 351 runners representing 52 schools.

Justin DeLuzio literally ran into some bad luck as a very rare and unfortunate accident happened. Just after the first mile, he was knocked to the ground, flipped over head over heels by a deer that ran across the course, crashing into him and over him. Teammate Matt French saw this happened, and stopped to get Justin back on his feet and would run next to him the remainder of the race.

As rarely as this ever happens, DeLuzio was very bruised up from the collision but fought through the remainder of the race with French right along with of him to make sure he was ok in a true showing of camaraderie and sportsmanship.

Head coach Kevin Clark was moved by the showing of his team to help one of their own. "Armani Rivera also paced with the duo and ran with those guys for a little while before continuing to finish the race. All three of these guys could have run significantly faster if this did not happen, but made sure their guy was fine. Justin is doing ok, he's just a little sore and bruised up. We were worried about his health for a while but we're proud to see him fight through this along with his teammates, get up and finish his last collegiate cross country race."

Rivera (31:09), French (31:16), and DeLuzio (31:16) would finish in 290th, 293rd, and 294th respectively with Lance Joseph capping the group with his spot in 311th (32:17).

Ernie Pitrone of Widener (24:52) was the individual winner, but it was Johns Hopkins taking the team title.