The women and men’s cross-country teams competed at the Purple Valley Classic at Williams College this past Saturday, Sept. 26. While the weather was more cooperative than the previous weekend, the Williams course is notoriously “challenging, yet rewarding,” according to Erzsie Nagy ’17. The women placed second overall in a field of 17 teams and the men placed sixth in a field of 22 teams.
There was intense competition at the Purple Valley Classic including four women’s teams that ranked in the top ten and seven men’s teams that ranked in the top 25. The women followed only Williams in the competition, placing ahead of MIT, Geneseo State and Amherst. The men followed Amherst, Williams, Geneseo State, MIT and Pomona-Pitzer.
Scoring for the men were Sebastian Matt ’16 (22), Miles Meijer ’19 (26), Sam Klockenkemper ’17 (33), Brian Rich ’17 (35) and Tim McGovern ’18 (38). Mohamed Hussein of Williams finished first overall.
Middlebury’s fourth place finisher, Rich, was thrilled about the competition and the performance of his teammates.
“It was just swell to get out on the course with some great runners. The way we worked together was neat and I hope we can work as a team in future meets,” Rich said.
For the women, the top five finishers were Abigail Nadler ’19 (2), Adrian Walsh ’16 (12), Erzsebet Nagy ’17 (13), Katherine Tercek ’16 (14) and Katherine MacCary ’19 (25). Lacey Serletti of Williams won the race on the women’s side. Nadler continued her streak of top place finishes this week after winning the Aldrich invitational last Saturday. She had another great race this weekend, finishing just seven seconds behind Serletti.
“It was a great experience racing with such strong competition and working with the team to move up throughout the race,” Nadler said.
These results show two runners in the women’s class of ’19 and one in the men’s class of ’19 scoring for Middlebury Cross Country. The first-year class put in a strong effort the past two weekends.
“Individually, I was really impressed with [Nadler] and [Meijer],” Wilkerson said. “They both raced extremely strong and fast.”
Despite great individual performances, the team’s performance as a whole were what seemed to stand out to Wilkerson.
“While I would like to praise those two individual performances as outstanding, I thought both teams did really well,” Wilkerson said. “Both teams averaged about 25 to 30 seconds faster than we did on this course last year, which happens to be one of the better indicators as to how we are looking. It is still early in the season, and this is a good indicator that our team is stronger than it has been in years past,” Wilkerson said when asked about how the team stacked up against some of the bigger teams in the NESCAC.
The team competes at the Paul Short Invitational at Lehigh this Friday, Oct. 2 and the Vermont invitational at Johnson State Saturday, Oct. 3. There will be over 45 teams at the race at Lehigh, with mostly Division I teams and the best Division III teams.
