While the women's cross country team's top seven runners were gearing up for this weekend's NCAA New England Championships, the second seven were keeping busy at Saturday's ECAC Championships in Bristol, R.I.
Although a number of schools used the meet as a tune-up for their varsity squads, coach Kristen Morwick sat her Regionals-bound group to ensure fresh legs for Saturday, when the Jumbos shoot for a bid to the NCAA Championship race.
"You really can't ask your athletes to run three hard 6ks in a row and put out their best performance," Morwick said. "It just doesn't make any sense if you make it [to Nationals] at Regionals you have, a week later, NCAAs. Four weeks in a row of hard races is too many championships."
The Jumbos finished 10th in the 42-team field, falling to six fellow NESCAC squads, including Williams, arguably the deepest team in the nation, which took a staggering seven of the top 10 spots. But with each team looking to accomplish different goals and racing lineups specific to those goals, emphasis is not necessarily placed on team-by-team results.
"It's hard to gauge how you're doing as a team not knowing who the teams are going to race," Morwick said. "Some of the [teams] that were ahead of us raced a good chunk of their varsity."
Freshman Bryn Kass led the Jumbos, coming away with 41st place in 25:11 on the 6k course. Following close behind were sophomore Jennifer Yih in 48th, freshman Caroline Melhado in 71st, senior tri-captain Betsy Aronson in 75th and freshman Lauren Flament in 79th. Yih, Melhado, Aronson and Flament all finished within 49 seconds of Kass in a solid pack-running effort on a course that proved difficult to navigate.
"I think we managed it really well," Kass said. "It's just a matter of during the race just focusing and trying not to let yourself get frustrated with environmental obstacles but just focusing on your own race and your own physical and mental capabilities. I think we definitely pushed through those and found a way to kind of get over that."
"The paths were really narrow," sophomore Isabel Hirsch said. "For the first mile, a couple people got boxed in and it was just really hard to pass people, which kind of tired some people out. That was a challenge we had to overcome."
Senior tri-captain Susan Allegretti and Hirsch rounded out the lineup for Tufts, crossing the line at 26:30 and 26:58, respectively. The course was particularly challenging for Allegretti, as the terrain posed problems for an ankle injury she sustained in the spring.
"The course was kind of a nightmare," Morwick said. "There were huge chunks of it on pavement, and there was a wooded loop they ran through twice with tons of roots and rocks. Susan, especially with her ankle injury, is really tentative on courses like that, and it really set her back. As a senior, you just want to see her have her best races at the end, but I guess it just wasn't in the cards, so that was hard."
The race was also one of the first 6ks both for this season's team and for the freshmen's early collegiate careers. After forgoing what was scheduled to be the first 6k of the season on Sept. 27 on account of rain, the team is still adjusting to the increase in race length.
"It's definitely a hard transition for anyone really, and especially for the freshmen because we're just not used to that distance," Kass said. "But just like any other cross country race, you learn by experiencing it, so after the first race you can kind of build off each experience. It's not so much easier, but you can better strategize and better decide how to run your race. As far as experience goes, I feel like we all understand what a 6k is now and what kind of effort we need to put into it."
Notably absent from the lineup this weekend were senior Veronica Jackson and sophomore Elana Davidowitz, as Morwick slotted the pair for Regionals in the team's No. 6 and No. 7 spots based on performances in the past few races, which were undoubtedly affected by the transition to 6ks.
"It was pretty much a 30-second gap between Veronica and Elana and the other girls," Morwick said. "Especially since we started running 6ks, I think it's hard because a lot of the girls haven't run a 6k before, so with Bryn and Caroline they're just starting to get used to the distance, and it takes a little while."
