Transportation issues marred Saturday's meet for the women's cross country team, but junior Amy Wilfert had no problem reaching the finish line, winning her second race of the season in the Plansky Invitational 5k race on Saturday.
The Jumbos were scheduled to compete in several events at Williams this weekend, but arrived late to Williamstown. The team bus had mechanical problems which delayed the team and left the 5k open event as the only race it could compete in.
"We were hoping to run the 6k," Wilfert said. "Williams' course is a really challenging 6k, and it's good preparation for future tournaments, but you can't control what happens to the bus."
Wilfert finished the race in 18:50, 13 seconds ahead of runner-up Amy Zindell, a graduate student from Williams. Only 49 runners from four schools competed in the event, including 19 Jumbos. The race did not include team scoring.
"We didn't expect a whole lot of competition because it was open race and there were [junior varsity] teams," Wilfert said.
The transportation issues were not the only surprise for Tufts. For the first time this year, sophomore Bryn Kass did not trail Wilfert as the second Tufts runner to finish. Instead, classmate Anya Price finished ahead of Kass, placing fourth overall with a time of 20:03. In fact, of the Tufts runners who placed at last week's All-New England Championship 5k, Price was the only one to improve her time.
"Last week, I didn't run as well as I could have," Price said. "[Saturday] I was very mentally and physically there. It was a smaller race, which makes it much easier to focus on the runners ahead of me rather than getting lost in the crowd."
Kass placed seventh overall, trailing Price by 13 seconds. Price explained the unusual results as being directly correlated to the team's strategy.
"Our coach wanted [Kass] to go out for the first mile with Amy Wilfert, so she went out faster than she would have normally," Price said. "Because it was a low-key meet, we could take risks like that. I caught up to her probably around mile two, and we finished about 15 seconds apart, so we were able to run together some of the way."
"The strategy was to have me pull some of the people behind me along a little bit," Wilfert added.
Freshman Grace Hafner was 39 seconds slower than Kass, finishing immediately behind her teammate in eighth place. Junior Jen Yih finished two spots behind, giving the Jumbos five runners in the top 10 of the race. In all, spots 10 through 15 were occupied by six Jumbos — including three freshmen — who all ran within 15 seconds of each other.
Wilfert, already a two-time NESCAC Performer of the Week this season, said that she will sit out of next week's Mayor's Cup at Franklin Park in Boston as the Jumbos prepare for November, when championship season begins. The first weekend in November will see Tufts race in the NESCAC Championships at Trinity.
"In two weeks we're focusing on the NESCAC Conference Championship meet, which will be only the second 6k we'll run," Price said. "It will be the first chance to see how we fare against top competitors in the region, and give us an idea of how the team runs the 6k."
"We would've preferred to run the 6k for that reason — to get more experience with that distance," she continued. "We have a lot of young runners and freshmen are mainly used to 5k races, so it would've been nice for them to run the longer distance, but that's why NESCACs are an important step before Regionals."
