Unfamiliar terrain for women's cross country

The women's cross country team will be running on an unfamiliar course at the NESCAC championship this weekend, and its hopes of earning a spot at Nationals is relatively unfamiliar as well.

"Of any team I've coached at Tufts, this is the best prepared," coach Kristen Morwick said. "We have our best shot of the last few years, so it's definitely a realistic goal for us."

As the strongest region in the country for women, New England will send five teams to nationals later this fall. Those five teams will be finalized at the New England Div. III Championships in three weeks, with NESCAC schools expecting to dominate that race. Therefore, this weekend's NESCAC showdown in Middlebury, Vt. should be a good indicator of which teams will grab the five national berths.

Tufts will likely battle Wesleyan and Bowdoin for fifth this weekend. However, Morwick noted that Bates is always good at the end of the season and has the potential to sneak into fifth.

The top four squads in New England are already well-cemented. Williams -- the defending national champion -- is joined by Amherst, Trinity, and Middlebury in the league's upper echelon.

Morwick believes that running against such teams could prove to be an advantage for the Jumbos later.

"If we make it to the national level, we wouldn't be freaked out by the best teams because we already race against them every week," Morwick said.

This Saturday, the Jumbos will rely most heavily on their top runners, senior captain Lauren Caputo and sophomore Becca Ades. Senior captain Lauren Dunn and junior Emily Pfeil have consistently rounded out the team's top four this season, and look to do so again at NESCAC's.

According to Caputo, a crucial ingredient for the team's success will be securing a tighter top five spread.

"If we have our fourth and fifth runners closer to our third, it will be key in qualifying [for nationals]," Caputo said.

According to Morwick, freshmen Sarah Crispin and Sam Moland are the squad's fifth and sixth runners, respectively. The absence of sophomore Arielle Aaronson, recently sidelined by a stress fracture, has left Tufts' seventh spot a big question mark heading into the weekend..

According to Morwick, senior co-captain Katie Higley, junior Katie Sheedy, and freshman Angie Lee have the most potential to jump into that spot.

"It's a spot you can gamble with, so we'll just have to see what the next few weeks tell us," Morwick said. "Sheedy's been running very well with only a few cross country races under her belt, but it'd also be nice for the future of the team to see a freshman jump in there."

"Every week the freshmen are clueing in even more," Morwick said. "I think it's going to be key for the team if the freshmen can step up and do something great by the end of the season, and they're on the verge of that."

Freshmen will be on equal footing with their more experienced teammates in at least one aspect of this weekend's race: none of the Jumbo athletes have ever raced at the hilly and difficult Middlebury course before.

"It's a true cross-country course, it's not going to cater to the speedy kids," Morwick said. "It is more for the tougher, stronger runners. But we've done well on tough courses so far this season, so we could be good."

Caputo said that the team plans to walk the course early Saturday morning, in order to familiarize itself with the terrain and help its chances of reaching its fifth-place goal.

"We've also been watching race results to see how other teams are doing," Caputo said. "It will be tough, but we've been working really hard."

"With the training we've had, I think we can do it," Caputo said. "We're ready."

Tufts finished seventh at the NESCAC meet last year, and is also currently ranked in that spot in the New England Div. III coaches' poll. Morwick and her team are unperturbed by the poll's predictions, though.

"Rankings are always different than how it actually turns out," Morwick said. "That's why you run the race."