Both the men’s and women’s cross country teams competed in the NESCAC meet held at Bowdoin on Saturday, Oct. 27. The teams each finished sixth place at the meet, with Tufts winning the men’s meet and Williams winning the women’s.

The men’s competition was tightly contested, with Middlebury finishing just three points behind Williams’ winning score of 66. It was a 19-point gap to third-place finishers Bowdoin (88), with Bates (89) and Williams (97) finishing just behind. Despite losing to Amherst two weeks earlier at the Little Three meet, the Wesleyan men finished far ahead of them this time around.

The women’s meet was more spread out with Williams finishing far ahead of the rest of the field with 45 points. Middlebury was closest but still far behind; the team finished with 71 points. Amherst finished third with Bates and Tufts tying for fourth ahead of the Cardinals, who finished with 153.

Unsurprisingly, co-captain Julia Mark ’13 continued her good individual season, as she led the Cardinals and finished eighth out of 127 runners with a time of 22:05.31 over the 6k course. Hannah Zimmerman ’13 finished second among Wesleyan runners with a time of 22:13.35.  Finishing in third place for the Cardinals was Jessica Sherry ’13 with a time of 22:41.75, which was good enough for 35th overall. The final two points-scoring members for the Wesleyan Cardinals were fellow seniors Ceili Brennan with a time of 23:11.31 (53rd) and Chloe Lalonde with a time of 23:31.58 (64th).  The women Cardinals should be somewhat disappointed with this result after a strong beginning to the season.

On the men’s side, Skyler Cummins ’13 led the team with a time of 24:37.39 across the 8k course, only 10.5 seconds behind winner Coby Horowitz from Bowdoin, and good enough for eighth place overall. Bryan Marsh ’13 finished only 17 seconds behind Cummins with a time of 24:54.12, which placed him in 13th position. Fellow senior Austin Cotant finished in 30th with a time of 25:23.44. The final two scorers were Taylor Titcomb ’16 and Matt Kim ’16 with times of 26:26.09 and 26:41.98, which was good enough for 63rd and 74th, respectively. Both freshmen will feel good about their performance, especially Titcomb, who has had an impressive start to his running career at Wesleyan.

“I feel good about the team’s prospects heading into regionals,” remarked Cummins.  “Our region is almost definitely going to send five teams to nationals, and we were the sixth team at the NESCACs.  I don’t think any teams outside our conference are much better than us.”

The next meet for the Cardinals is the ECAC Division III meet on Saturday, Nov. 3.  The Cardinals will give their junior varsity members a chance to compete at this meet while saving the varsity runners for the New England Division III Championship on Saturday, Nov. 10.