This Saturday brought a formal end to the season for the men's cross country team. As the single member of the Tufts roster racing at the Div. III NCAA Championships, senior Justin Chung fought it out at West Chester, Ohio, to cap off a rebuilding year for the Jumbos.
Chung, who made it to Nationals on the strength of his eighth-place finish at New England Regionals, finished with a time of 29:19 for 177th place in the race. As a fitting end to a season that had its share of tough conditions, copious rainfall the week before the race soaked the 8K course and made for sloppy conditions and slow times.
"It was a pretty muddy day," Chung said. "Times were very slow. It was supposed to be a 24-minute course, but the top finisher came in at about 26 and a half."
Indeed, the entire field seemed to be off of its regular pace, due in large part to the mucky footing. Last year's individual second-place and this year's individual first-place finisher Macharia Yuot, a senior from Widener University, ran a sub-five-minute mile pace at the 2005 Nationals in Delaware, Ohio, for a time of 25:26.5. His finish of 26:31 this year, two-and-a-half minutes off the projected course time and a minute off of his previous Nationals performance, is indicative of the corresponding shift in times that affected most of the field.
"I think it had been raining on and off approximately for the past month, and it was a very tough course because of it," Chung said. "It was very similar to NESCACs in that it was hard to move around. I was trying my best, but it just didn't turn out the way I wanted."
Aside from the mud, the size of a race compounds the difficulty of movement for runners trying not to get caught up in the crush of the crowd. With 32 teams from eight regions and 56 individual competitors, the 2006 Nationals field was the largest ever, with a total of 279 runners taking on the soggy turf.
Calvin College came in first overall with a score of 37; its top five scoring runners all placed in the races' top 15. Calvin also has the distinction of putting the first scoring runner across the line in senior Tim Finnegan (26:41), as Yuot was an individual runner whose placement did not count for scoring purposes.
NYU captured second place, scoring 92 points, with a display of tight pack running, having less than 30 seconds of separation between its first and fifth runners. Allegheny finished a distant third with 212 points.
Though the Tufts team as a whole did not receive an at-large bid, four New England teams, all members of the NESCAC, did have a chance to represent the region in Ohio. Williams, following the precedent it has set all season long, took the top spot out of the NESCAC schools, coming in seventh overall with a score of 278. At-large Wesleyan (415) followed after in 15th, upsetting automatic bid Bowdoin, which took 17th place with 470 points. Trinity (786) rounded off the New England competition in 31st, nudging out last place Ohio Northern by one point.
"I was happy that I got out there as an individual," Chung said of his opportunity to race in the large national meet. "It was a new experience, to race alone."
Chung's presence at Nationals made 2006 the 13th consecutive year that Tufts has participated on a team or an individual level in the championship race. His teammates were present to cheer him on, representing the Tufts program as the shirtless, body-painted ?ber-fans affectionately called "the TUXC Crazies."
"[The cheering] was the highlight of the day for me," Chung said. "They were screaming at every place on the course possible. I mean, they had to travel for 14 hours just to get there."
Nationals represented the final chapter of the 2006 season, and the Jumbos will move forward as a team. With training already in progress and the first meet fast approaching, indoor track brings the start of a new season and a new chance to build on the successes of the past.
"That's what we're looking forward to - indoor and outdoor track," Chung said.
