Tufts comes up short in first meet of season

Football might be a game of inches, but yesterday's men's cross country meet was a game of hundredths seconds.

Unfortunately for Tufts, it was a Bentley Falcons runner that edged out a Jumbo, allowing the Falcons to nip Tufts by a single point in Saturday's annual Hayseed Classic.

In its first race of the year, Tufts (34) succumbed only to Bentley (33), one of the region's top Div. II programs. The Jumbos easily defeated Wheaton College (108), Merrimack College (135), Fitchburg State (144), Rhode Island College (156), Assumption College (169), St. Joseph's (180), and University of New England (245) in placing second at its own Grafton Course.

Tufts' best chance to win the meet came at the eleven and twelve spots, where Jumbo junior Mike Don made up significant ground over the second half of the race and turned on the burners down the stretch to gain steadily on Bentley's Marty Van Buren over the final yards. However, Van Buren crossed the finish line in 27:44.96, just ahead of Don at 27:45.36, giving Bentley the advantage it needed.

Bentley's Ryan Agnew blew away the field, finishing in 25:56, almost thirty seconds ahead of the second place finisher. Junior Nate Brigham led the way for Tufts and finished in fourth overall with a time of 26:39. But he wasn't alone. Right behind Brigham in the fifth, sixth, and seventh overall positions were three more Jumbos. Junior Neil Orfield finished strong with a 26:46, freshman Josh Kennedy ran an impressive 26:51 in his first collegiate race, and sophomore Matt Lacey pounded out a 26:56.

The fact that Tufts' top four runners finished consecutively was part of a trend of Tufts managing to keep its runners together in packs. Although their times didn't officially contribute to the Jumbos score, freshman Daniel Jones, freshman Justin Chung, junior Brian MacNamara, senior James Lamoreaux, freshman Peter Orth, senior Peter Jurcynzski, and senior Dave Hennessey hung together and occupied the 14th through 20th spots overall.

"We were trying to run a controlled race," coach Connie Putnam said. "We thought we could sneak by Bentley, but you can't play games with a good DII school like that."

"The pace Bentley set today was a little fast," senior co-captain Jon Rosen said. "Being that it's a hot day and we ran so many freshmen, we weren't quite ready to keep up with their top guys."

Still, Tufts was happy with the result considering that several top runners didn't compete. Among those watching from the side were Rosen, fellow co-captain Peter Bromka and fellow top ten runners senior Ian Joseph, sophomore Kyle Doran, and sophomore Mike Cummings.

"I'm confident if we had our full squad we would have handled them pretty easily" Rosen said.

"We're not resting guys to be ungentlemanly," Putnam said. "But we can't run everyone every race. Guys need to rest."

Among those who could use the rest is Lacey, who faded at the end of the race and appeared drained afterwards. Still, Putnam pointed out, he finished in the top ten out of 100 runners. "He just can't run 100 miles a week and try to be a significant factor in a race that weekend," Putnam said. "That's too much work for a sophomore."

Lacey was able to hang up front with Brigham for the majority of the race. By contrast, Orfield and Don were Jumbos who seemed to pick up steam as the race advanced.

"We ran a really good fourth mile, with Mike and Neil really setting a nice pace," Putnam said. "If Brian MacNamara and Don had raced together a little better, maybe it could have been a different story."