Week of rest prepares women for NESCACs

After a weekend free of competition, the women's cross-country team throws itself into a flurry of postseason activity with this weekend's NESCAC Championships. The Jumbos have set a goal of improving upon the ninth place finish out of ten that they saw at last season's race.

The regular season meets that have taken place have been helpful indicators of the strengths and weaknesses of each team. But this and other postseason events in which championship titles are at stake provide a much clearer picture of the threat of each regional squad as the Jumbos vie for a coveted NCAA berth.

"I think we have an opportunity to do well," coach Kristen Morwick said. "The top four would be awesome, but even the top six would still be better than last year. We had the weekend off and did some good relay races and now we're ready to get out and race again and see how we stack up."

Though the ECAC Championship next weekend, and, most importantly, the NCAA qualifying meet in two weeks will provide the most incentive to perform optimally, this NESCAC Championship will also prove challenging. While teams do not hunt the NESCAC title as feverishly as they would the NCAA qualifying bid, they do use the meet as an opportunity to measure themselves up against the other teams who will be competing for one of five NCAA spots in the Northeast region.

"We don't want to put all our eggs into one basket, so how well we do this weekend isn't the most important thing," Morwick said. "We want to use it as a preview of three weeks from now. We have two of the top teams in the country in our region [Williams and Middlebury], so we'll run against the best in the country and see how we stack up."

The only NESCAC foe whom Tufts has not yet encountered this season is Hamilton College, who cannot be compared to last year's squad since it lost its top two runners from that team. Even though Hamilton proves to be a bit of an enigma, they are also unfamiliar with the course, having never run at Grafton yet this season.

"It's our home course and we want to take advantage of that. It's the first championship meet we've had here, and the first in a series of a championships, so we want to start off on the right foot," senior co-captain Sarah Foss said.

Otherwise, the Jumbos have seen mixed results against a slew of teams who are within reach and could pose a threat in the NCAA bid. While Williams and Middlebury are clear-cut favorites to garner to the top two spots, the remaining three slots are up for grabs and ready to be snatched by a handful of competent teams. Trinity College looks strong enough to be a frontrunner in obtaining the third slot, but nothing is set in stone, and a conglomerate of at least five teams will provide healthy competition.

Though Amherst came out on top at the Jumbo Invitational in late September, the Jumbos prevailed a week later over the Lord Jeffs at the All-New England Championships. Wesleyan has also shown mixed results throughout the season. After beating out Tufts at both the Jumbo Invitational and the All-New England Championships, the Cardinals fell hard to the Jumbos a week later at the James Early Invite as they kept company with the bottom-dwellers in 20th place in the field of 26 teams.

The largest enigma in the league is Bowdoin College, which hasn't been seen in competition except for the All-New England meet in mid-October where it put in a sub-par performance. The Polar Bears have withheld running their top seven in a meet yet this season and have provided little insight as to the progress their team has made throughout the season.

Given what the Jumbos do know about the other nine teams in the league, the pack running that they have engaged in all season will be their strength as they head into the NESCAC contest. The top seven who will comprise the varsity squad has not yet been chosen, mainly because the pack has been so effective that it has provided a group of ten runners worthy of the seven available positions. This weekend will solidify who the seven will be, giving all the added incentive to perform well this weekend.

"We run as a pack, it's definitely our strength. After practicing as a group and training together we race more effectively with each other," senior Kristen Munson said. "A lot of other teams have one or two girls running together up front, instead who have a group of two girls and one of seven girls. We're just going to work on closing the delta a little more."

The NESCAC Championship meet heralds the postseason, and culminates a season's worth of hard work and determination. It is not the overall finish of the team that will be the most important, but how well the squad performs in relation to the teams it will meet up with again in three weeks to determine who will make the trip to the NCAA meet.

"We're looking to be pretty far up there, we want to see what the competition will be like for the qualifiers," Foss said. "There's a big difference in where we are now as where we were at this point last year. We're in such better shape and instead of having one person lead us, we're all running as a team. All the hard work is paying off."