The women's cross country team certainly has a tough task this season if it wants to outdo last season's historic finish.
And it might have to do it without half of its one-two punch.
Senior tri-captain Cat Beck will be sidelined for most of the fall season with a stress fracture in her right femur, likely sustained at the end of the spring track and field campaign.
Beck finished third overall at the Div. III New England Regional Championships last year as a junior and was All-American in both the 1,500 and 5,000 meters in track last spring.
As such, senior tri-captain Katy O'Brien will be forced to lead the charge without her fellow tri-captain. For a team that captured a fifth-place finish at the NCAA Div. III Championships after a disappointing 22nd-place finish in 2005, the Jumbos will place a heavy burden on O'Brien if they want to repeat last year's performance. O'Brien herself, meanwhile, is just planning on taking it one meet at a time.
"We definitely want to be able to duplicate a season like we had last year, but I guess we will see how it pans out when the championship season comes," said O'Brien, the team's second runner last season and the overall winner at the 2006 NESCAC Championships. "We are obviously hoping to get to Nationals, but on a lower level, we are hoping to do well in the NESCAC and ECAC as well."
In addition to O'Brien, junior tri-captain Betsy Aronson will also be counted on to fill part of Beck's leadership void. Junior Katie Rizzolo will also hope to lead the pack, looking to improve upon a strong finish to her 2006 campaign, when she took 71st at the Div. III New England Regional Championships for the Jumbos.
Running without Beck, in addition to last year's seniors, Raquel Morgan and tri-captains Sarah Crispin and Jenny Torpey, the team will certainly have a different look than the one that notched a second-place finish at the NESCAC Championships and posted the team's best finish in the conference meet since 1987. Still, the squad isn't too concerned because the team believes this year's Jumbos have what it takes to fill the vacancies.
"We are looking to a lot of the upperclassmen, like [junior] Susan Allegretti and some others," Rizzolo said. "We have a lot of new recruits like [freshman] Amy Wilfert and some transfers. We hope the ECAC group from last season can step up."
Although Beck will have to contribute from the sidelines for the time being, she and her teammates refuse to back down on their goals.
"As a team we are looking to build on the success from last season, and continue to achieve those levels," Beck said. "We want to prove that last year was just not a lucky chance. We know we have improved as a team and a program, and it would be very exciting to go out and make a mark as a NESCAC powerhouse."
The Jumbos open up the season this Saturday at the Trinity Invitational, where they will hope to start the 2007 campaign in a similar manner to last year, when they won their opening invitational at Connecticut College. The Jumbo Invitational at the home course in Grafton is Sept. 22, while the team will have its eyes on the NESCAC championship meet held at Williams on Oct. 27.
While Rizzolo hopes for a strong start to the fall season, she remains focused on the big picture. Her main goal for this weekend is to gear up for the latter part of the season.
"I have learned from experience that the big meets are the most important, but the earlier meets do not mean much as to what you see on paper," Rizzolo said. "People's fitness changes, the weather changes, the course changes and you just don't know what will happen. The earlier meets are important because they help us get back into cross country and eventually peak in November."
