It was a close race at the top, and mere seconds made all the difference for the men's cross country team's frontrunners at Saturday's NESCAC Championship race, hosted by Bates.
While Williams junior Edgar Kosgey robbed junior Jesse Faller of the runner-up position, running a 25:42 to Faller's 25:43, junior co-captain Nick Welch just managed to edge Conn. College sophomore Shawn Mulcahy to secure seventh place, running a 26:07 to Mulcahy's 26:08 mark. The Jumbos needed that point over the Camels, as they narrowly beat out the Conn. College squad, 129 to 130 to earn fourth place overall.
Hamilton junior Peter Kosgei won the race for the second year in a row, finishing 35 seconds ahead of the pack at 25:07 and setting a new course record in the process. By finishing in the top seven, both Faller and Welch earned First Team All-NESCAC.
"I mostly wanted to get out well and always be in at least the top 15 for the first half of the race and then move up inside the top 10 by four miles [in], and that was more or less how it played out," Welch said. "We all got off the line really well, and Jesse and I were together for most of the first half of the race. Then it started to split a little bit, but I was able to move up in the second half and pick off guys all the way up to seventh."
Junior Ryan Lena was Tufts' third finisher, crossing the line in 26:27 in 19th.
"Ryan Lena really stepped up, and this was probably one of the strongest races we've seen out of him this year," coach Ethan Barron said. "I think he's really ready to take a step forward in the next couple of weeks and be a big piece at the regional level."
"Ryan had really a breakout race," Welch said. "I think he had probably been expecting to be within the top 35 or so, and to end up 19th, he ran a very smart race, moving up the entire time. He wasn't even running in this race last year, and now he finished 19th and is definitely looking to be All-Region in two weeks."
Sophomores Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot and Jeff Ragazzini finished 51st and 58th, respectively, to finish off the scoring. Eisenberg-Guyot, Ragazzini and sophomore Chris Brunnquell, who was Tufts' sixth finisher in 65th place, successfully executed the team's pack running strategy.
"The goal is to try to [run in packs], and it's not always able to be done perfectly, but I was very pleased with the level of pack running [the team] did," Barron said. "I thought the guys did a great job of cueing off of each other and supporting each other out there ... As a whole, I think the team really raced to strategy and had a very successful meet by our definition."
The team's biggest test will be at the Nov. 15 NCAA New England Championship meet, where Tufts will face off against the NESCAC schools again as well as the other Div. III schools in the region to compete for a chance to attend Nationals.
With strong non-conference programs such as the nationally ranked top-30 MIT, Keene State and Brandeis, all of which are seeded ahead of Tufts in the region, the Jumbos will need to be upset-minded heading into the race if they hope to secure a team berth to Nationals.
But with the team's recent history, the Jumbos shouldn't be worried. Last year, Tufts placed fifth at NESCACs and went on to claim third at Regionals, while the year before, it placed eighth at NESCACs and fifth at Regionals.
"We have a history of stepping it up after NESCACs," Barron said. "Basically the last couple years we've moved up at least two places in the Regionals meet [from the NESCAC meet]. It will be difficult to move up from fourth, and I don't think we'll expect to move up two spots, but we are going to do everything we can to put our best race forward at Regionals."
Whether Tufts will finish closer to the second- and third-place teams, Trinity and Amherst, at the Regional meet is hard to say. And while the Jumbos warded off Conn. College this weekend, they'll have to look out for the rest of the league in the regional meet.
"The teams right behind us in fifth and sixth, Conn. College and Middlebury, were very close to us as well," Barron said. "Ultimately we don't have any control over how teams like Trinity and Amherst are going to run. We just have to put our race together and run as well as we can and then hope that the points shake out in our favor."
"Williams is a really solid squad this year, so for us to beat them would take a really strong performance and them giving us some openings," Welch said.
"For every other team in the region, we know that essentially whether or not we beat them depends on our performances, not theirs, and that's a good thing because we feel we can pretty much compete with anything, and that means that we know what we need to do to get to Nationals in Indiana," he said.
