With little on the line, the men's cross country team was content to make a strong but not all-out effort in its first race of the season. And in that regard, the Jumbos' fourth-place finish Saturday at the Trinity Invitational in Manchester, Conn., showed that they are headed in the right direction.
The Jumbos were led by two-time All-American senior Jesse Faller, who finished the 5,000-meter course in 16:44 to place 12th out of 86 competitors. Following just three seconds behind was senior captain Nick Welch, taking 16th.
"The guys looked good," Welch said. "We obviously don't really test ourselves in the first meet or in the first couple meets, and later on when we really go hard in the 8K is when we'll see exactly where our fitness is at.
"Judging by our race Saturday at Trinity, but also by the workouts we've had the past couple weeks and really the whole summer of training … we're off to a good start," Welch continued. "I think it will get more and more exciting as the weeks come and as a team we start to put the summer training and all of last year's training into these meets."
Senior Ryan Lena took third for the Jumbos, finishing 21st with a time of 16:56. Rounding off the scoring were freshman Matt Rand and junior Jeff Ragazzini, finishing 25th and 26th with times of 17:02 and 17:03, respectively.
"I thought [the team] looked great," coach Ethan Barron said. "Almost everyone who returned from last year raced the same time but made it look much more effortless."
According to Welch, the plan was to run a controlled first mile and a half, focusing on running in packs, and then to start moving up during the second half of the race, closing in hard in the last mile.
"It's encouraging to see us have our top seven at the meet be so tight even without [juniors] Chris Brunnquell or Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot, who were members of our top seven last year," Welch said.
Rand was the first of eight freshmen competitors to finish for Tufts in the class' debut collegiate race.
"We wanted to go out pretty conservatively and stay pretty comfortable for the first two miles," Rand said. "At the two mile mark I was still pretty comfortable, so I caught Jeff Ragazzini, and I tried to pick it up a little and just stay with him the last mile … I was happy with a top-25 finish."
"The freshmen looked great," Welch said. "The freshmen are the ones who are running their first collegiate race, and therefore have a new uniform, new courses and new teammates … but this year we had a lot of our freshmen on Saturday look like they've been doing this a lot longer than one week."
With a large incoming freshmen class, the Jumbos could boast a deeper squad than they've had in recent seasons.
"The Class of 2013 seems to me like the most mature and composed group of freshmen we've had come in, at least in the years I've been here," Welch said. "First season you run in college, anything can happen. We're not relying on any freshmen to do something; rather, we're just lucky to have a really talented group that has a lot to contribute."
The Jumbos have Saturday off but will travel back to Connecticut on Sept. 26 for the Conn. College Invitational, where the team will compete in its first 8K race of the year.
"All the freshmen need to adjust to the extra distance that the 8K has," Barron said. "Some will adjust faster than others."
"I'm looking forward to the longer race," Rand said. "I've heard it's a pretty flat course, so I'm looking for a fast time to start out my 8K career. I know a couple [freshmen] are more 800-meter [runners] and milers on the track, so they might not be looking forward to the longer distance as I am … so I think there will be a mix of those who will benefit from it and who will not."
But while the freshmen will be looking to show their potential in the Jumbos' next meet, the team's veterans will be careful not to overexert themselves this early in the season.
"Like Trinity, the [Conn. College Invitational] is a meet where we are trying to make small steps forward but not necessarily run the race of the season as a team," Welch said. "It will be a chance for us to get a good sense of where we are and actually throw down against a lot of our regional rivals on a pretty fast and flat course that most of us have run before."
