Despite loss of two captains, Nationals remains top priority

    After enjoying a successful 2007 season — which featured a third-place finish at the NCAA New England Championship and an at-large bid to the NCAA Championships — the men's cross country team starts off with a clean slate on Saturday when it travels to Hartford, Conn. for the Trinity Invitational.
    Although much of the training occurs during the summer, the team came back earlier to meet and train in preparation for its first race.
    "We've had a chance to see the freshmen," junior co-captain Nick Welch said. "They seem like a good class. There's a whole range of abilities and experience levels, and it'll get clear how they're able to run when we get more races and workouts. At this point they look good and seem excited and ready to jump into it."
    While it took clutch performances and a little luck to qualify for Nationals last year, the team is hopeful that it can equal last season's effort.
    "There are many parts of the year that make up a successful season, like guys improving and making a jump after summer or freshmen having a good intro to college running and college life in general," Welch said. "Each workout, each week, each race has its own importance. Obviously, there's much more focus and importance placed on late season meets that impact Nationals."
    "I don't think our team goals are much different this year than last year or previous years in general," Welch continued. "We want to get back to Nationals. Whether it comes from winning Regionals or grabbing that at-large bid, our goal is to get back to Nationals in the long term."
    The team will be looking for some new faces to step up and fill the void left by the departure of former senior captains Chris Kantos (E '07) and Dave Sorensen (E '07), two of the team's top three runners in the 2007 campaign.
    "There's no hiding the fact that we graduated two of our top three, two of our seniors, captains, leaders," Welch said. "In every respect, it's a big hole to fill. But there are guys that are going to step up, there's not a doubt in my mind ... There were a few guys last year who were at the back of our top seven and certainly can look to make the jump."
    Additionally, the team will look for continued improvement from junior Jesse Faller, who last year as a second-year was already the team's best runner. His 18th-place finish last year at the NCAAs in Minnesota was more than 60 spots ahead of the next Tufts runner — Sorensen finished 79th — and was good enough to merit All-American honors.
    "I can't fill the role myself because I'm only one person, and we're losing two seniors [from our top seven]," Faller said. "The best I can do is to do as well as I did last year or better, which would be important for the team. As far as filling the roles of the seniors, we have a couple sophomores looking really good right now, and I think they've been training hard all summer and they're going to be a huge part of our team."
    Those sophomores will get a chance to show their improvement this weekend during the race at Trinity. While it poses no late-season significance and will be shortened to a 5k race, as opposed to the traditional 8k length, the team looks to this first meet as an important piece of the foundation to a successful 2008 campaign.
    "It will be the first chance for those returning to come back after months of track and get back on the cross country course and see how all that summer training can be put to use," Welch said. "For the freshmen, it's their first chance to don a Tufts uniform and race as a Jumbo. The program has its continuity, but each team has its own identity, and this will be the first time that the '08 team steps on the line together."