The men's cross country team began the road to achieving their goal for the 2001 season by qualifying for Nationals at Westfield State this past weekend. Competing against the New England Div. III region, the top seven varsity runners knew they needed to run a strong race to qualify for Nationals, as only the top five of the 12 competing teams go on to the Nationals meet. The competition was stronger than expected, but the Jumbos managed to qualify, finishing fourth overall.
"We weren't looking for fourth place, but then you can't look a gift horse in the mouth," senior co-captain J.R. Cruz said.
The Jumbos had high expectations entering the race. Keene State, the decisive victor in the meet with 54 points, was a known favorite. Aside from Keene, the Jumbos felt they had one of the meet's strongest teams and hoped for a second place finish. Yet for the second race in a row, they were unable to overcome the strength of second place Bowdoin (83) and were also edged out by MIT (106), forcing the team to settle for fourth place (113). The team was not disappointed in their finish though, keeping their focus on preparing for the upcoming weekend.
"We realized that it was just a qualifier race and that nationals is really where we want to do our best," freshman Nate Brigham said
While the Jumbos ran a strong race overall, they suffered from an atypical race from senior co-captain Ben Smith. Smith, who consistently finishes second place in the varsity lineup, instead finished fourth on the team (26:00 min). Paired with strong races from Keene St., Bowdoin and MIT, this made Saturday a tough day for the Jumbos.
Despite Smith's run, the squad was not taken down and had enough depth to earn its spot at Nationals and edge out NESCAC rival Williams (128).
Leading the Jumbos to the fourth place finish was Cruz, who finished first among Jumbo runners and seventh overall (25:14). In past races Tufts has run conservatively, staying in a pack and beginning with a slower first-mile pace before picking up speed.
This weekend however, the team abandoned the successful season-long strategy in the face of their fiercest competition, and ran hard from the get go.
"[The teams top finishers] just went out hard and set a strong pace," Smith said. "That's what we need to do at Nationals. At the NESCACs we stayed back a little too long, and we can't let that happen again."
Along with Cruz, Brigham kept a strong pace throughout the race as well. Finishing second for the Jumbos, Brigham was the top freshman finisher in the race (25:43). After a rough experience at the All New Englands, Brigham was unsure of how well he could perform in a race of this size, yet he overcame his freshman anxieties and helped lead the team.
"It's not easy to be a freshman and be running at the rate he's running," Smith said.
Along with Brigham and Cruz most of the Jumbos had a strong outing at Westfield, a necessity for them to beat out the strong Div. III teams of New England in order to qualify for Nationals. The strength of the competition was exemplified by the fact that consistently strong teams such as Trinity and Bates missed qualifying for Nationals.
Now the Jumbos will spend this week preparing to fly out to Augustana, IL to compete against the nation's top Division III teams this Saturday. While there will be a multitude of strong teams at this race, many of which the Jumbos have not seen this season, the team enters with high hopes of a top-five finish. Tufts has been consistently strong at Nationals the past several years hovering around the top ten with an 11th place finish last year. Seventh place in 1996 is the highest any Tufts team has finished at this race and this squad hopes to break that mark for a new school record.
"It's a lofty goal, but we still haven't had a race where we're all on this season and we hope to do that at Nationals," Cruz said.
While fifth place will be a difficult feat, the Jumbos hope to at least finish second of all New England schools, knowing Keene St. will be tough to beat.
"It's going to take great races from all of us, but it's going to take races within our capability," Smith said.
