Following a fifth-place performance at NESCAC Championships a week ago, the men's cross country team raced to a modest 10th-place showing out of 37 teams at the annual ECAC Championships held at Williams. The host Ephs won the race overall, with Keene State, SUNY Oneonta, St. Vincent and The College of New Jersey rounding out the top five.
"It was the best 10th-place finish I've ever witnessed in terms of what went down and who stepped up," coach Ethan Barron said. "Great all-around performance by all the guys."
While the team would have normally run its second seven runners at the meet, Barron ran his No. 6 through No. 12 runners this year hoping it would serve as an audition for the final two spots on the team's lineup at NCAA Div. III New England Regional Championships. The meet also gave the members of the junior varsity team some valuable championship experience.
"The experience is one of the top benefits of the ECAC meet," Barron said. "You give a lot of guys a chance to have championship experience. We will see some benefits to this meet way sooner than next year's season."
Freshman Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot was the highest placing Jumbo after the team's strongest participating runner, junior Dave Tilton, was unable to finish the race due to an illness. Tilton was the team's sixth runner at last weekend's NESCAC Championships.
"I think as a whole, we ran really well," said sophomore Billy Hale, who finished 96th in 28:51. "[Because of Tilton's illness], our score and how we placed doesn't really reflect how well we would have placed overall. Jerzy stepped up and had a really big race. That was exciting to see."
"I was really happy with my performance," Eisenberg-Guyot said. "For a while I had been pretty tired, because I had been running a lot more miles than I was used to, but now it is starting to pay off."
Eisenberg-Guyot took 36th place overall, coming in with a time of 27:38. Classmate Jeff Ragazzini was the only other top-50 finisher for the Jumbos, placing 48th overall with a 27:51 clip. Senior Matt Alander, sophomore Ryan Lena and freshman Andrew Bellet also scored for the Jumbos, placing 60th, 70th, and 86th, respectively.
The Jumbos saw significant boosts in their times from last week's NESCAC Championships, run on the same course. While much-improved weather conditions certainly made the hilly course easier to navigate, running against more evenly-matched competition also propelled the Jumbo runners.
"It's a great opportunity to be in a race that you know you're going to be in contention, as opposed to running in a race with a lot of the older, faster runners where you are mainly there to gain experience," Hale said. "It changes our mindset; we are more aggressive. It was a fun race."
"[Competing in this race] felt really good, particularly because we were closer to the front of the race, as opposed to when we race with the varsity team, [when] we are usually towards the middle of the pack," Eisenberg-Guyot added.
With the varsity team set to return next week for the crucial Regional Championships to be held at Conn. College, the Jumbos will have to make sure they are both focused and prepared if they hope to fare better against the conference rivals that they struggled against two weeks ago at the NESCAC Championships.
"Williams is clearly the most deep and favored team," Hale said. "But number two, three, four and five are up for grabs, and I think we match up well against those teams. We are all peaking at the right time. Everyone is getting faster, and we will be stronger at Regionals than we were at NESCACs."
"Bowdoin, Trinity and Amherst all placed ahead of us, but I think they are within striking distance," Eisenberg-Guyot added. "I think we are pretty confident. We have a lot of potential to improve, and I think if we all do well, we'll have a chance to make Nationals."
