Men’s, Women’s Cross Country Teams Outpace Competition

On Saturday, Sept. 21, the Middlebury cross country teams traveled to Bard College to participate in the Bard College Invitational.  The Panthers continued their dominant performance from the opening  where both teams turned in decisive victories.

The women started the day off by topping the 16 team field, scoring 15 points. The Panthers owned the top five finishes and had 10 of the first 11 finishers. Alison Maxwell ’15 claimed overall victory for the second week in a row, completing the 5-km course in 18:17 seconds. Finishing within four seconds of Maxwell were Sarah Guth ’15, Summer Spillane ’15, Erzsy Nagy ’17 and Olivia Artaiz ’15 to round out the scoring runners.

“This race was really a teamwork exercise for us to focus on the ‘blob’ mentality that we pride ourselves for,” said co-captain Katie Rominger ’14. “We were told to stick to a certain pace for the whole race until the last 45 seconds or so. We were all impressed with how great we felt finishing as a group, and hope to continue that strategy for this weekend.”

Spillane believed that despite weaker competition, all members of the team rose to the occasion.

“Energy was high the whole race, and we were very good about communicating with each other,” Spillane said. “Although at the race next week the field will be larger and more competitive, I think that if we use a similar strategy we can, hopefully, be very successful again.”

Coach Nicole Wilkerson was impressed with several of her athletes’ performances.

“[Spillane] had a great showing and kudos to the first years – Nagy and Catie Skinner ’17,” Wilkerson said. “They both had strong races.”

After the strong showing by the women, the men replicated another dominant performance, turning in another 15 point performance to oust the 22 team field. Greg Krathwohl ’14 was the overall victor in 24:35, one of the fastest 8-km races run in Middlebury history. Teammates Kevin Wood ’15, Nate Sans ’14 and Wilder Schaaf ’14.5 joined Krathwohl in breaking the 25-minute barrier.  Sam Cartwright ’16 was the last scorer for the Panthers with a strong 25:17 performance.

Similar to the previous week, Wilkerson had prescribed a controlled effort for the start of each race followed by an increase in speed towards the latter stages of the races. Both women and men aimed for a “tempo” portion of the race where the speed continued to increase before the Panthers worked together as a pack to drop the pace and push each other. While the women’s race went to plan, the nature of the fast start from the gun for the men’s race caused the pack to slip up earlier.

“The strategy going in for both groups was to work off of each other and for them to rely on each other to push each other,” Wilkerson said. “It is much easier to dig deep when you are really running for a team and that is what we were working on.  I think they did a great job with it.”

The Panthers travel to Williams to participate in the Purple Valley Invite on Saturday, Sept. 28 in what should be the first real test of the year, with several NESCAC, Division I and Division II teams expected to be in attendance.