In only its second-ever team appearance at Nationals, held at Kansas University on May 13-14, Tufts finished 13th in a 35-team field of Div. II and III schools. While individuals have gone to Nationals in past years, this year's team appearance demonstrates the strides that the program has made in recent years.
"That we managed to qualify as a team is overwhelming," senior co-captain Olivia Jaras said. "I'm really proud to leave the team in such good shape. Last year I went [to Nationals] as an individual, and this year we managed to send an entire team - I never thought I'd see that."
Jaras and juniors Katie Dunn and Caitlin Thompson, competing in the A Division for most of the season, earned enough points to qualify individually for Nationals. But their points, along with contributions from sophomore Judy Wexler and freshman Vince Chavanon throughout the season, were enough to earn the entire team bid to Nationals, allowing senior co-captain Chris Eager and Chavanon to join the women at Kansas. [Wexler is a news editor at the Daily.]
In addition to finishing 13th nationally, the team placed second of all teams from its conference, the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC), behind only MIT, which finished 5th nationally. The ECCC is the largest collegiate conference in the nation and includes some of the nation's top programs such as Dartmouth, Penn State and Princeton.
"From the New England area, the only team that beat us was MIT, and they have this lab with a wind tunnel where they train," Jaras said. "No other East Coast team beat us. The East Coast Conference is the biggest conference in the country, and that makes it that much harder to qualify for Nationals. That's really a huge accomplishment."
Tufts got contributions from Jaras, Thompson and Chavanon in both individual events - the road race and the criterium - and from the seventh-place finish of Jaras, Thompson and Dunn in the team time trial.
Thompson's 21st-place finish in the road race added 61 points, Chavanon contributed 20 from his 41st-place finish in the road race, and Jaras split her 48 points evenly between the road race, where she finished 35th, and the criterium, where she finished 19th.
"Those placings might not sound that great, but you're racing against people that do this professionally," Jaras said. "Cycling's not a varsity sport, so there's no regulation against people getting paid to do this. Kids like Sarah Uhl [a former world champion and this year's runner-up in the Div. I individual title] or Anna Milkowski from Yale [seventh-place finisher in Div. II and a three-year professional rider] - they're cyclists who happen to be part-time students as well. The competition is insane. I used to swim and run cross country and the competition there was hard, but it's nothing like this."
Jaras' 19th-place finish in the criterium on Sunday was the highest individual placing of any Tufts rider, and would likely have been a top-10 finish if not for a heart-breaking pileup on the final lap.
"That was honestly the best race of my life," Jaras said. "I was in the lead pack for the whole race, keeping with girls that get paid to do this. I managed to escape one huge crash on the last lap and got caught up with the top riders. But right at the last corner, there was another crash and I couldn't avoid that one. I still finished 19th, but I know I could have gotten top 10 if I hadn't crashed."
On Friday, Jaras, Dunn and Thompson competed in the team time trial, a collaborative event that demands team cohesion and has little room for error as team members ride in a straight line, rotating out of the top spot that faces the brunt of the wind. The 14-mile loop was the longest the team had faced all year, as conference time trials are usually between seven and nine miles, and intense wind challenged the Tufts riders.
"It was a really long race, a 14-mile time trial against the wind," Jaras said. "You have to really know your teammates and how they ride and make the transitions as smooth as possible."
The trio had hoped to finish second in the race, behind season-long foe MIT, the event's favorite to win. At the Easterns, the ECCC's final event of the year, Tufts finished just 16 seconds behind the MIT squad.
But strong competition from unfamiliar opponents led to a finishing time of 45:16, seventh out of 12 teams and three minutes behind the Engineers.
"In the women's races, [other teams] were constantly attacking, sprinting out and trying to drop the rest of the pack," Jaras said. "I'd never been in such a competitive race. Not even Nationals last year was this competitive."
However, as Wexler was unable to make the trip, the team had only three riders instead of the usual four, and only one other three-rider team finished ahead of the Tufts squad.
"Only one team that finished above us started with three riders, and with the length and fact that it was extremely windy, having a fourth member would have really helped," Thompson said. "But we felt like we raced our best race all season at Nationals."
Tufts Cycling did not field a men's team time trial, as only two men were eligible to race.
Chavanon finished 28th in the criterium, but earned 20 of his 26 points from a 41st-place finish in the road race. Chavanon finished the 84.6-mile course in 3:48:16, 7:56 back from the winner.
"In a race that long, I tried not to put [in] too much effort in the beginning and just sit in with group to get the draft and block the wind," Chavanon said. "In first lap, I missed one of the feeds - people handing out water and Gatorade - and I got a little dehydrated, which caught up with me in the second lap and I started to cramp a little bit, so I finished a little lower that I would have liked."
Chavanon, the team's lone freshman, made the mid-season move to A Division and put forth his best showings of the year at Nationals. Along with Dunn, Chavanon will be a captain of next year's squad.
"[Vince] is going to be a monster next year," Jaras said. "This was his first season, and not many freshmen are able to do as well as he did."
The Collegiate Road Nationals concludes a successful season for Tufts cyclists. Tufts finished in seventh place in the 21-team ECCC Div. II. With Eager and Jaras graduating, the team will rely on A-riders Thompson, Dunn, and young Chavanon to keep Tufts rolling in 2007.
