The men's cross country team earned its place in Jumbo history on Saturday in Dartmouth, Mass. by finishing third overall in the NCAA Regional Championship and capturing a spot in the National Championship meet, to be held next weekend. It was the fourth time in the last five seasons that the Jumbos qualified for Nationals.
Tufts placed third overall in the Regional Championship meet (128 points), finishing behind Keene State (38 points) and Williams (52 points), respectively. Trinity and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy will join the top three schools, giving New England five representatives at the NCAA Div. III Championships at Whitworth College in Washington state.
"We all ran pretty well," senior co-captain Dave Patterson said. "We expected to be a little closer to Williams [but Keene State and Williams] are both two really strong teams. Keene State is looking to win nationals this year."
"We knew what we had to do and we did it," Coach Connie Putnam said. "Even if we had to count our seventh guy's score we would have qualified [for nationals]."
Patterson led the way for the Jumbos, finishing 8th overall (25:04), along with juniors J.R. Cruz in 21st overall (25.36), Jason Mann (24th, 25:45) and Ben Smith (26th, 25.50). Freshman James Lamoureux rounded out Tufts' top five, placing 50th overall (26.28).
While the Jumbos beat Trinity and the US Coast guard convincingly, Keene State and Williams completely dominated Tufts. Both Keene State and Williams had all five of its runners finish the race before the Jumbos' second runner, Cruz, crossed the finish line.
The Brown and Blue was able to finish third in the meet largely due to the performance of Patterson, at the head of the pack, and because Cruz, Mann and Smith bunched together so well in the middle. Still, the meet was somewhat of a letdown for Cruz, who was coming off the first win of his career in last weekend's ECAC championships. Typically, Cruz battles Patterson for the number one spot on the team.
"Smith and Mann had good solid races," Patterson said. "Cruz had a little bit of an off race, after [his outstanding performance] last week. For the first mile or so he was a little bit ahead of me. I keyed off him. He was a little bit tired from last week."
"Not everyone can have their best race every weekend," Putnam said. "[Cruz] jumped out a little hard and got a little tired in the last mile. By no means did he let the team down."
The Regional Championship was the fastest race the Jumbos have seen all season. With a sharp turn soon after the starting line it was imperative that the runners get off to a quick start in order to gain prime position or face the prospect of falling behind and never catching up.
"We started off fast," junior Justin Lewis said. "It was just fast pace all the way. At the two mile mark, I was over 20 seconds faster than in any race before."
Despite adverse weather wreaking havoc on the track itself, most Jumbo runners set personal bests for the meet.
"The conditions were kind of sloppy, which made for a difficult race," Patterson said. "It takes more leg strength and it's harder to get a rhythm going [when its rainy]."
"There were a lot of sharp turns where we had to slow down because it was muddy and the grass was lose," Lewis said.
With their finish, the Jumbos achieved their main goal for the season, which was to qualify for the National Championships.
"We are happy," Patterson said. "We knew we should be there. Now that the stress of qualifying is over we are can relax and try to have [our] best race [at Nationals]."
This week will be anything but relaxing for the Jumbos, as the team will take a six-hour cross country flight to Washington on Wednesday. The team leaves on Wednesday specifically so that the runners have adequate time to adjust to the three-hour time difference as well as go over the course before running in Nationals on Saturday.
The race will feature all the top Div. III teams in the nation. However, facing strong competition is nothing new for the Jumbos, as they have battled Keene State and Williams, currently ranked two and nine in the nation respectively, all season.
Since teams train all year for this meet, there remains little for the Jumbos to do in terms of preparation in the next week, other than going over the course and doing some light workouts.
"In the training aspect, there is not much we can do," Lewis said. "This week is about getting mentally ready."
In order to surpass last year's ninth place finish at the meet, Tufts will need to take out the race at a fast pace from the beginning and will also require a big effort from its fifth runner.
"If you don't get position early, you are not going to have it," Lewis said. "You don't want to have to play catch-up. My goal is to get up with [Lamoureux and Adrian Wilairat] so we can decrease the [delta] between the fourth and fifth men."
The number of teams that New England sends to nationals next year will correspond to the number of teams from the region that finish in the top 16 on Saturday. While the Jumbos want to better last year's finish, the more pressing goal is to finish in the top 16 in order to keep New England's five automatic invitations for the national meet.
