The Profs are gearing up to compete in Galloway, N.J., this weekend for the Osprey Open, their second event of the regular season. After a third-place finish at Salisbury’s Fall Classic to begin the year, the Profs are looking to show out on a fellow New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) team’s home course.

Rowan opened their season at Stockton last year in the Stockton Season Opener, a dual meet between the two schools. Rowan won the event over the Ospreys, behind a first-place finish by then junior Scott Hubbard. Hubbard finished with a 25:23.62 in the event, less than a half second better than Prof’s teammate Joshua Cason, who’s now graduated.

Head coach Dustin Dimit likes to align events in the regular season with the familiarity of courses that the Profs will see in the NJAC Championships, which were at TCNJ last year. That’s why, last season, Rowan competed in the Lions’ Herb Lorenz Invitational for their second event.

Now, with the NJAC Championships being held at Stockton, that’s where Rowan wants to compete.

“We always try to see the conference and regional courses ahead of time,” said Dimit. “It’s kind of how we set things up to try and make sure we’re seeing those things. And so it’ll be a good chance to see some of the other regional competition before meets, you know, get a little bit bigger as we go to Lehigh and our own meet that has a lot of interregional competition.”

Stockton’s course is relatively flat, and that has allowed Rowan to finish with good times through the years competing at the course. 

Colin Patterson will look to build off his impressive start to the season after placing first at Salisbury and running his best-ever 8k time.

“I didn’t expect it,” Patterson said on Sept. 9. “At a certain point, I was like ‘I really can win this, you know.’”

Despite not competing in the Osprey Open last season, the season opener wasn’t the only time that the Profs made a trip over to Galloway. Stockton played host to the NCAA Metro Championships as well, where Matthew Conway qualified for the NCAA Championships off his time. 

This weekend’s event is the first event that final times begin counting towards efforts to qualify for postseason competition. 

The race is slated for a 10:30 a.m. start time in Galloway on Saturday morning.

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