CMS Men's Cross Country Class of 2021 Head Shots

Video Tribute: The CMS Men's Cross Country Class of 2021

As part of NCAA Division III week (Apr. 5-11), we will be honoring the senior classes for all 21 of our varsity sports. A number of our student-athletes elected to take a semester or a school year off and could return to action next season, but we have chosen to honor the senior classes as they would have been, without the COVID-19 interruption. The members of the Class of 2021 lost so much of what they had built towards in their first 2-3 years of competition when the pandemic hit, but still clearly left their mark on CMS Athletics.


CMS men's cross country celebrating the SCIAC title CLAREMONT, Calif. - The CMS Men's Cross Country Class of 2021 had a big role in helping the program win back the SCIAC Championship in 2019, and also helping the Stags to a top 10 finish at the NCAA Division III Championships (sixth).

The SCIAC title was a big feather in the cap for this year's seniors, which had come in third in each of their first two campaigns. Both times they responded with strong showings at the NCAA Regionals to earn a team qualification to the Division III Championships, but the group headed into 2019 wanting to win their first conference crown. It came down to the narrowest of margins, but the Stags ended up pulling out the conference title in a tiebreaker to take it back for the first time since 2016. 

The Stags then earned a sixth-place finish in the NCAA Championships, just one behind the fifth-place finish in 2016 for the best in program history. The Class of 2021 also helped the CMS men's track and field team win back the SCIAC title in the spring of 2019, although their repeating plans were derailed by the pandemic in 2020. 



The eight members of the CMS Men's Cross Country Class of 2021 (many of whom plan on returning next year for another run at postseason titles), are as follows:

Evan Hassman (Ardmore, Pa. - HMC, Engineering) 
Hassman earned All-America honors during track and field season as a sophomore, finishing in eighth place in the steeplechase at the NCAA Division III Track and Field Championships. He also had his highest finish at the SCIAC Cross Country Championships as a sophomore, finishing in 29th place, while also adding a top-10 finish (sixth) at the Cougar Challenge and a 15th place finish at the Pomona-Pitzer Invitational. His 9:08.60 in the steeplechase at the Occidental Distance Carnival moved him into third place in CMS Track and Field History. An engineering major at Harvey Mudd, Hassman earned SCIAC All-Academic Team honors and USTFCCCA All-Academic Team honors and has held software engineering internships at Honeywell Aerospace and Google. 

Gage Hornung (Boulder, Colo. - CMC, Economics, Environment and Politics (EEP))
Hornung came in 36th place at the SCIAC Cross Country Championships as a freshman in 2017, while adding an 11th place finish at the Coyote Challenge and a 15th place finish at the Biola Invitational. He returned to action at the SCIAC Championships as a junior two years later, and ran in two meets during track and field season before the suspension of spring sports. A SCIAC All-Academic Team selection every year, Hornung majors in economics, environment and politics at Claremont McKenna and serves as a research analyst for the Lowe Institute of Political Economy at CMC. 

Will Kimball (Sammamish, Wash. - CMC, Mathematics and Economics)
Kimball has made the All-SCIAC second team in each of his last two seasons of competition, while representing CMS at nationals as one of the team's top seven. As a junior, he also added USTFCCCA All-West Region honors to his resume by coming in 12th place at regionals, matching his finish at the SCIAC Championships. As a sophomore, he finished 14th at SCIACs to earn all-league honors for the first time. He also had a strong performance at the SCIAC Track and Field Championships with two top-10 finishes, earning fourth place in the steeplechase and coming back to earn 10th in the 5000. A SCIAC All-Academic Team selection and a USTFCCCA All-Academic honoree, Kimball majors in mathematics and economics at CMC and has interned as a business analyst at Amazon. 

Bennett Mountain (West Springfield, Mass. - HMC, Computer Science and Mathematics)
Mountain finished in the top half of the field at his last SCIAC Cross Country Championships, earning a 53rd place finish. In his last SCIAC Track and Field Championships as a sophomore in 2019, he also contributed with a strong 13th place showing in the 1500 meters, earning a time of 4:13.52. A computer science and mathematics major at Harvey Mudd, Mountain has held internships at Facebook for two straight summers doing data analytics, and has also recently served as an AI Engineer intern at Masimo in Irvine, California. On campus, he has served as a computer science grader and tutor, aiding students in Principles and Practice of Computer Science, a course taught in Java, Assembly and Python. 

Arjun Natarajan (Los Gatos, Calif. - HMC, Computer Science and Mathematics)
Natarajan has competed at the SCIAC Championships in cross country all three seasons, while earning SCIAC All-Academic Team honors each year, picking up his high finish of 33rd at the Coyote Challenge hosted by CSU San Bernardino. As a sophomore, he scored for the Stags at the SCIAC Track and Field Championships, earning eighth place in the steeplechase with a personal best time of 9:50.06. He also had three top-six finishes in the steeple at SCIAC Multi-Duals during the regular season, with a high of fourth at the second one hosted by Caltech. A dual major in computer science and mathematics at Harvey Mudd, Natarajan has held two internships in software engineering and product management at Opsani, and also interned as a software engineer for PayPal. 

Luke Ostrander (Tacoma, Wash. - CMC, Economics)
Ostrander transferred in to Claremont McKenna as a sophomore, after competing for Brandeis University as a freshman. In his debut for the Stags at the Biola Invitational, he earned a top-50 finish with a strong 44th place showing. During track and field season, he set a PR in the SCIAC Championships in the 5000 meters with a 16:14.84 after earning two top-five finishes in regular season multi-duals. During his junior year, he added top 50 finishes at the Coyote Challenge and the UC San Diego Triton Challenge, and came in eighth place in the 5000 at the first SCIAC Multi-Dual in track and field season before the suspension of spring sports. A SCIAC All-Academic Team member, Ostrander has worked as an investment banking analyst for Cowen, Inc. in New York City since June.  

Daniel Sealand (Portland, Ore. - HMC, Computer Science)
Sealand had his best performance in his career at the SCIAC Cross Country Championships as a junior in the fall of 2019. He finished in 29th at SCIACs, a big jump from No. 64 and No. 69 his first two years, and added two top-20 finishes in the regular season at both the Coyote Challenge and the UC Riverside Invitational. He also scored in both SCIAC Track and Field meets he competed in during his first two seasons, qualifying for the finals and earning an eighth place finish in the 1500 as a first-year in 2018, and then earning an impressive fifth-place finish in the 800 as a sophomore in 2019. A computer science major at Harvey Mudd, Sealand has held a global technology internship position at Nike for the last year, developing a time-series forecast to predict returns in stores.  

Stevie Steinberg (Los Angeles, Calif. - HMC, Engineering)
Steinberg is a three-time USTFCCCA All-West Region, improving his finish every season as a member of the Stags. He was 25th at regionals as a first-year in 2017, then improved to ninth place in 2018 and came in third place last year as a junior. He also earned All-SCIAC honors for the first time with a seventh place finish to earn first-team all-league, helping the Stags to the team championship, and added a 51st place finish at the NCAA Championships to help CMS finish sixth. In track and field season, he ended in sixth place in the 5000 as a sophomore and seventh in the 10000 as a first-year. An engineering major at Harvey Mudd, Steinberg has worked as an earthquake engineering researcher at Northeastern, and is serving as an engineering intern for Second Order Effects this spring.