Cross Country Challenged at NESCAC Championship

This past Saturday, Oct. 31 the men’s and women’s cross country teams competed at the NESCAC championships hosted by Wesleyan University at Long Lane Farm.  It was a beautiful fall day and the conditions were great for running on Halloween.  The Panthers competed against the ten other teams in the NESCAC, some of the best teams in the country.  The competition included Middlebury, Williams, Tufts, Connecticut College, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, Hamilton, Trinity College and Amherst College.  Overall, the women placed third out of eleven and the men placed fifth, with great performances on both sides.

The women finished third behind Williams and Tufts, with a total of 92 points.  Williams and Tufts had 30 and 66, respectively. The women were well ahead of fourth place Amherst with 113 points and fifth place Bates with 139 points. The top five finishers for the women were Abigail Nadler ’19 (2), Adrian Walsh ’16 (13), Emma DeCamp ’17 (22), Katherine Tercek ’16 (27) and Sasha Whittle ’17 (31).
“Overall, I’m very excited about getting second place, but I know there’s still room for improvement,” Nadler said. “I’m really proud of how hard the team ran, but we all know that we still haven’t reached our full potential.” She finished just one second behind the NESCAC Champion Lizzie Lacy of Amherst.

The men’s team finished fifth behind Williams, Amherst, Tufts and Hamilton. They finished with a total of 147 points, just three points behind fourth place Hamilton. They averaged a four second faster 8K pace overall than the fourth place finisher, indicating just how close the race was. The top five finishers for the men were Sebastian Matt ’16 (13), Chony Aispuro ’18 (17), Brian Rich ’17 (18), Sam Cartwright ’16 (37) and Sam Klockenkemper ’17 (58).

“A lot of people really stepped up this weekend,” Rich said. “Now that we’ve qualified for regionals, we can focus on building the speed necessary for the late-season meets.”

Overall, Head Coach Nicole Wilkerson was happy with her team’s result.

“We were happy with the results but will look to improve on them,” Wilkerson said. “We had some excellent performances from the women but I think we can close the gap (and pass) on Tufts even more.  MIT will be in the mix as well at Regionals.”

Next weekend, the teams go on to compete at ECACs hosted by Williams, and NCAA Regionals at Connecticut College the following weekend. There are only three more potential meets left in the season for Panthers Cross Country, with the final meet being the NCAA Division III National Championship in Wisconsin.