The Wesleyan cross country teams ran well at the NESCAC Championships in Middlebury, Vermont on Saturday.
The women’s team placed fifth out of the eleven teams competing, improving its overall season record to 65-19. The women were once again led by first-team all-NESCAC honoree, Courtney Quirin ’05, who finished the 5,000-meter course in second place in 18:15, just two seconds behind the winner of the race. Quirin’s finish is the highest by a Cardinal woman at the NESCAC Championship in 10 years.
“We came in fifth place and not everybody raced to their potential, so we were happy that we still came in fifth despite that; it shows our potential as a team,” said Quirin. “I was really shocked at my place because I wasn’t expecting to get second, and I’m really happy with it. It was exciting and fun.”
Ellen Davis ’07 finished 24th (out of the 121 finishers with a time of 19:32. Erin Smith ’06 (31st, 19:44), senior co-Captain Brittany Allen (34th, 19:45), Megan Wise ’05 (20:16), senior co-Captain Kate McNamara (56th, 20:30) and Gina Tassone ’05 (68th, 21:19) rounded out the top seven for the Cardinals.)
“It was a pretty good day for us, and we are trying to work on closing the gap in our top five or seven. I think that we are starting to get better at that,” said Wise. “It was really good weather, and it helped that we got to run the course a few times before. There was a lot of really good competition, and hopefully we can continue to compete with the teams next week.”
The men’s team finished in seventh place out of the eleven competing teams, bringing its record to 71-37. Owen Kiely ’06 paced the Cardinals, finishing eleventh out of 123 total finishers in the 8,000-meter course. Kiely, now a second-team all-NESCAC honoree, completed the course in 27:05. Captain Bryan Bissell ’04, who has also run consistently well all season, followed closely and placed 16th with an exact replica of his time from last week’s Little Three meet (27:13).
As usual, the next five finishers were freshmen. This week, they were Jon King ’07 (43rd, 28:21), Alex Battaglino ’07 (50th, 28:33), Mike Brady ’07 (53rd, 28:38), Anda Greeney ’07 (55th, 28:40) and Chris Foster’07 (60th, 29:00). These same seven harriers will most likely represent Wesleyan at the New England Regionals on Saturday, Nov. 15.
“It was a tough course and it beat a lot of people up, but everyone ran really well. We hope to do better at the championship meet,” King commented after the meet.
“The course was more treacherous than we had expected coming in, playing to the disadvantage of the aggressive nastiness of Owen and me, culminating in a sub-par day for the entire squad,” said Bissell. “As we say in the story-telling business, sometimes the good guys win, and sometimes it’s the bad guys. This Saturday, the results showed the worst.”
“We had some tough performances by guys like Alex Battaglino and Mikey Brady, but it takes a lot to succeed in the NESCAC,” added Bissell. “We’ll take our crew of young whippersnappers to Regionals in two weeks.”
The next event for the Cardinal cross country teams is the ECAC Division III meet at Tufts on Saturday, Nov. 8. The meet will serve as a final test for the New England Regionals at Bates College the following Saturday.
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