The women's cross country team will travel to Colby College in Maine this Saturday for the much anticipated start to its postseason with the NESCAC Championship.
The Jumbos will enter 12 runners in the varsity race, including senior tri-captains Katie Mason, and Katie Sheedy, juniors Becca Ades and Arielle Aaronson, sophomores Sarah Crispin, Samantha Moland, Raquel Morgan, and Jenny Torpey, and freshmen Catherine Beck, Katy O'Brien, Anna Shih, and Laura Walls. The twelve have consistently been among the top finishers for Tufts this season and look to lead the Jumbos to a strong finish on Saturday.
Ades has led the team all season, picking up where the graduated Lauren Caputo left off last year. Additions Morgan and O'Brien have traded off between second and third for the Jumbos while a pack of Beck, Walls, Shih, Sheedy, and Crispin have rotated to round out the Jumbos top five. The key for championship meets like this weekend will be keeping runners close in a pack to ensure low scores.
"We're all going to have to do pretty well and I think we're ready to put it together," Sheedy said. "We had a good meet in Maine and then we had a week off. The middle top group has been running more together."
The NESCAC Championship should be a good litmus test for the Jumbos since many of the contenders who will be at the NCAA Division III New England Regional Championship in two weeks will be running against the Jumbos this weekend at Colby.
Currently, Tufts has been relegated to also-ran status by coach's polls in New England and across the nation. In an Oct. 25 New England cross country poll Tufts is ranked fifth, behind Colby, Middlebury, Williams and Amherst. Nationally, Williams and Amherst are ranked in the top three with Middlebury fifth. Tufts is nationally ranked 21st behind both Colby (15th) and Wesleyan (20th), putting them behind five NESCAC teams.
"[The polls] shows who the top teams are going to be but they don't really show anything until you race against each other," Sheedy said. "It's just matters who are the most competitive teams on the day of the race."
If the Jumbos hope to secure a spot at nationals this year, they will have to be one of the top five teams at Regionals. Tufts has yet to beat Williams, Middlebury, Colby, and Wesleyan, all of whom beat the Jumbos at the All-New England Championships on Oct. 8. Tufts has beaten both Amherst and Wesleyan once on separate occasions, but both teams were resting some of their top runners.
The top three spots in NESCAC are all but set in stone with Williams, Amherst, and Middlebury most likely securing those spots in no particular order. The main competition for Tufts will be Colby and Wesleyan, both of whom will vie with the Jumbos for fourth.
"It's going to be pretty competitive," Sheedy said. "Those are the two teams we're really working to beat. Hopefully on a good day we would beat them."
Last season, the Jumbos placed seventh at NESCACs behind seniors Caputo and Lauren Dunn. Four of the five top finishing teams at that NESCAC Championship went on to finish in the top five at the New England Regional.
"It's an important meet but it's not the most important meet," Sheedy said. "Everybody's looking for a personal best and we're definitely shooting for the top four or five. We're looking ahead to the regional meet but this is important to us too."
