Cross Country Crosses the Line

As the season is coming to a close, the Middlebury Panthers are continuing to assert their dominance at their meets. The women’s team captured first place while the men’s team was able to attain second place in their respective meets at the Connecticut College Invitational on Saturday, Oct. 14.

Thirty-six points was enough for the women’s team to take first place in a total field of twenty-two teams.

Abigail Nadler ’19 and Kate MacCary ’19 came in fourth and fifth place respectively. Their times were 22:09.3 and 22:10.9. Middlebury’s next places were eighth, ninth, and tenth consecutively. Meg Wilson ’20 came in eighth place with a time of 22:46.9. Tasha Greene ’21 came in ninth place with a time of 22:55.4 and Rory Kelly ’19 came in at tenth with a time of 22:56.2.

“The consensus is that we ran well and improved a lot from last year,” said Wilson. “We still want to work on closing the gap between our first two runners and the third, fourth, and fifth runners because most likely in the next couple meets there will be more runners in between us which will definitely hurt our score.”

The men’s team took second place with 77 points in a total field of twenty teams. RPI came in first with fifty-five points.

From Middlebury, Ascencion Aispuro ’18 came in ninth place with a time of 25:40.1. Matt D’ Aquila ’21 with a time of 25:41.1 came in eleventh place and Harrison Knowlton ’19 with a time of 25:55.0 came in fifteenth place. The last two scorers for the team were Theo Henderson ’20 in eighteenth place and Andrew Michelson ’19 in twenty-fourth place. Henderson’s time was 26:01.7 and Michelson’s was 26:14.5.

The next meet will be the long awaited Nescac championships on Saturday, Oct. 28, in New Gloucester, Maine, followed by the NCAA regional championships. An entire season’s worth of work has been leading up to these crucial meets.

“To prepare for Nescacs, we are going to do a little more hill work because the next couple meets have hilly courses and hopefully also do some speed work which is what I like,” Wilson said.

“Also we want to keep everyone healthy and not injured which is always a challenge.”