The Colorado College men's cross country team opened the 2023 season on Saturday with a fifth-place finish at the UCCS Rust Buster Meet in Monument Valley Park.
 
Senior James Settles led the Tigers with a 28^th-place individual finish, running the 8K race in 27 minutes, 20.90 seconds. Fellow senior Devlin Swanson was close behind in 33rd place with a time of 27:30.19.
 
Sophomore Huck Whittemore placed 43rd, followed by freshman Will Shuflit, who finished 46th in his first collegiate race. Senior Ayden Cherry rounded out the scoring for CC in 47th place.
 
"The Rust Buster is always a good way to get some early-season quality work done, and it helps the first year runners begin to learn how to race a new distance," head coach Alex Nichols said. "The efforts were intentionally controlled today, but it was great to see so many returners running much faster than they did last year at this time. I'm very happy with how the whole group performed."
 
Team Results
1. UCCS – 37
2. NM Highlands - 54 
3. CSU-Pueblo – 55
4. Metro State – 88
5. Colorado College – 144
6. Regis University - 167
 
Colorado College Individual Results

Place	Name	Time
28	James Settles	27:20.90
33	Devlin Swanson	27:30.19
43	Huck Whittemore	28:01.57
46	Will Shuflit	28:23.92
47	Ayden Cherry	28:27.65
52	Axel Komplarens	28:53.48
53	Dominic Schwein	28:59.60
55	Parker Libby	29:12.69
57	Ethan Castette	29:24.19
58	Brett Kitazono	29:30.82
59	Liam Mullen	29:32.79
61	Luc Santos	29:47.41
67	Eric Coombs	30:15.71
68	Walt Jones	30:16.30
69	James Lyons	30:17.86
71	Ruben Margolis	30:26.53
73	Connor Clarkson	30:42.75
76	Jay Moran	31:24.17
78	Andrew Peng	31:41.60
79	Aidan Santos	31:53.11
81	Rabbit Barnes	31:20.25