The Women's Cross Country team used a tight pack of runners to take fourth place among a talented field of Canadian and American teams at the McGill Open in Montreal, Quebec on Saturday. Freshman Katy O'Brien (14:46) and junior Becca Ades (14:47) led the Jumbos again this weekend, finishing 13th and 14th, respectively, in the 4k race.
Freshmen legs paced the Jumbos again with O'Brien, Catherine Beck (23rd, 15:00), Anna Shih (28th, 15:06), and Laura Walls (45th, 15:32) finishing in the top eight for the team.
"You don't generally expect your freshmen coming in to be an immediate impact," head coach Kristen Morwick said. "We kind of lucked out."
The freshmen, along with sophomore Raquel Morgan (26th), a transfer student, have joined Ades and sophomore Sarah Crispin (35th) to give the Jumbos considerable depth and firepower. The team managed to place its top seven runners within 31 seconds of each other, an improvement of 21 seconds from the Connecticut College Invitational's split for the same seven. In addition, the top seven runners were the same names, but in a different order.
"We have the luxury of having a little depth this year," Morwick said. "Our top seven should be different every week. It's going to be all over place."
Tufts has a very deep roster, with senior Katie Mason, junior Arielle Aaronson and sophomore Jennifer Torpey joining Walls to form a middle pack that is only a few seconds off the leaders. Teams rely on such depth to carry them through long seasons, which can be marred by injury.
"This year, for the first time since I've been at Tufts, I feel that we have that [depth]," Morwick said.
The Jumbos are replete with underclassmen and field only four seniors on their 29-person roster. The addition of the fast freshmen, along with returnees one year older and one year more experienced, has left Morwick very optimistic.
"The team is a lot better. People are returning in better shape and the new people are great," Morwick said. "Hopefully, this is the start of a really good trend with cross country."
With such a young and inexperienced team, Morwick has been pleasantly surprised by the Jumbos' success. Early in the season, teams train longer and harder and do not expect to see very fast times at their initial meets. Yet the freshmen have set a new trend.
"Some of them are completely unfazed by hard training," Morwick said. "They are pretty laid back about competition. It's very rare to have freshmen like that."
Tufts lost its top two runners, tri-captains Lauren Caputo and Lauren Dunn, to graduation in the spring. Caputo, an All-American, was the team's only representative at the NCAA Div. III National Championships last season, finishing 71st. However, Morwick is not worried.
"We are way ahead of where we were last year," Morwick said. "Yeah we lost Dunn and Caputo, but we put ten people in front of Dunn's time at [McGill] last year."
News and Notes: Joining the Jumbos in the Open was NESCAC rival Williams, who took second. Considering that the Ephs, who placed fourth at the NCAA Div. III Nationals last season, have a very strong program with sound recruiting, Morwick predicted that the Ephs could win Nationals this season ... Senior Emily Pfiel, who didn't run over the summer due to injury, will be practicing this week ... The team will join the Men's team at home in Grafton this Saturday for the Jumbo Invitational at 1 p.m.
