The men’s and women’s cross country teams finished sixth and tenth out of 11 teams, respectively, at the NESCAC Championship last Saturday at Middlebury. The men finished with 169 points and the women with 268, just 13 points ahead of last-place Trinity.
Williams’ men’s team won the NESCAC Championship for the second year in a row with 39 points—10 points worse than their first place finish last year—followed by Colby with 76 and Middlebury with 80.
For the women, Middlebury also repeated as champions, putting up 38 points to beat out second-place Williams (47) and third-place Amherst (108).
The race started out with a large pack controlling the speed as the runners inched up a few long hills and dealt with muddy footing and the low temperature. First year Riley O’Connell described the conditions at the start as a “a frozen slip-n-slide.”
Then, after the first mile, a steep downhill signaled the real start of the racing. The course weaved around the perimeter of the bucolic, Middlebury-owned, Ralph Myhre Golf Course, and featured wide paths and many short climbs and sloping descents due to the steep terrain.
O’Connell continued, “It was about as bumpy as a gummy worm in dirt cake.”
Captain Avery Wentworth ’15 finished first for the men’s team with a time of 25:55.4 on the rolling eight-kilometer course, good enough for 18th overall. Wentworth was followed by sophomore Bridger Tomlin, who finished 35th with a time of 26:18.1. Tomlin led a pack of Bowdoin runners—including sophomore Matt Jacobson (37th) and seniors Kevin Hoose (39th) and Will Ossoff (40th)—who all finished within eight seconds of one another.
The women’s team was led by junior captain Lucy Skinner, who finished 28th with a time of 23:55.2 over six-kilometers.
Skinner was followed by sophomore Caroline Corban, who finished 53rd with a time of 24:56.3, and junior Ally Fulton who finished 57th with a time of 25:07.1.
Rounding out the scoring for the Polar Bears were freshman Sarah Kelley (64th) and senior Brenna Fischer (66th), who finished with times of 25:18.9 and 25:24.1, respectively.
Both teams will send runners who qualified to the New England D-III Regional Championship at Williams on November 22.
If the runners perform well enough at Williams they will compete in Mason, Ohio at the NCAA championships the following weekend.