After graduating two team captains and an All-American runner, most cross country teams would hunker down and enter a rebuilding mode. But despite suffering from the aforementioned adversities, the men's cross-country team is once again entering the season with high hopes.
The team finished 11th in the NCAA championships and fourth overall in the NESCAC league last season - a disappointing finish for a squad with such high aspirations.
"It really annoyed the team that we didn't make it to the top ten at NCAAs," coach Connie Putnam said.
The team begins this season with a laundry list of expectations, which include making the top five at the national tournament this year and winning the NESCAC title. Such goals will be difficult to achieve, considering personnel losses which include the graduation of All-American David Patterson.
"Losing Patterson was a crushing blow, but we didn't loose the heat of a whole team," Putnam said.
In fact, this year's co-captain, senior Ben Smith, feels that without Patterson to depend on, the team as a whole will run harder at their races.
"We're in almost a better place now," Smith said. "The guys in the back won't always know that Dave's up there to depend on and it'll make them run that much harder."
Smith along with his co-captain, senior J.R Cruz, is confident that this year the team will be able to live up to its own expectations. Five Jumbos: Smith, Cruz, seniors Jason Mann and Justin Lewis and sophomore James Lamoureaux are all returning from last year's NCAA team. With several promising freshmen including Michael Don, Nate Brigham and Brian McNamara joining the ranks, Putnam and his men see few holes in their lineup.
"We've got lots of hungry freshmen looking to fill spots for us," Cruz said.
Even with a strong team, the Jumbos face heavy competition this year in their quest to win the NESCACs and make the top five for NCAA teams. Williams will be their strongest opponents this season, a team that always seems to edge out the Jumbos in cross-country competition. Along with Williams, Putnam sees a total of seven teams who enter the season with a legitimate shot at going to the NCAA tournament. With MIT, Bowdoin, Trinity, Bates, and Keene State also looking good this season and only five slots for these teams at the NCAA tournament, two teams will be left on the outside.
"That puts a lot of pressure on us on qualifying day," Putnam said.
To assure that the team is not left behind, Putnam and his squad have designed a new training program that should help prevent the Jumbos from wearing out towards the end of the season. Instead of running all of his men at every race, Putnam has split his team up into two groups and will alternate the groups in races throughout the season. His new training program was designed to meet runners' requests for longer rest and recovery time between meets.
"Running every race takes a toll on your body and we wanted more rest time," Cruz said. "This new program is going to enable us to race harder when we need to most."
While Putnam himself designed the program, the team seems enthused by the radical change from seasons past.
"I'm absolutely thrilled about it," Putnam said. "Our old training was too battering and there wasn't enough recovery time. I'm impressed by his courage to make such a change.".
While a program such as this has never been tested here at Tufts, the Jumbos seem confidant that it is the best way to keep the squad rested and in shape so that they will be able to run their strongest races at post season tournaments.
The new plan will officially go into effect this weekend as only half of the cross-country team will race at the Hayseed Classic on Saturday at 12 p.m.
