In a field of 49 teams and well over 300 runners on Saturday, the Tufts women's cross country team found itself right in the thick of things with a 22nd-place finish, led by an 11th-place individual showing from junior Amy Wilfert, best among all NESCAC runners.
Squads from Div. I, II and III all raced in the 5K All-New England Championship at a muddy Franklin Park on Saturday. Brown University won the title with 130 points as its top five runners all finished in the top 50. Tufts accumulated 680 points, 45 behind 21st-place UMass Amherst. Though she crossed the line 10 seconds away from finishing either within the top five or outside the top 20, Wilfert separated herself from her teammates with an 18:18 time — a 5:53-mile pace.
"I think the race wasn't as spread out as it was in past years," said Wilfert, who finished 21st last year with a time of 18:27. "I started out pretty far back, so I had to work my way around large groups of people. Being stuck in a group makes it harder since you can sometimes fall into a lull."
Maine sophomore Corey Conner, who took first place overall, made quick work of the competition, outdistancing the next-closest runner by nearly 30 seconds.
Yet, as the top finisher among conference runners and second among Div. III competitors, Wilfert won her second NESCAC Performer of the Week honor, having garnered the honor after registering her first collegiate victory in the first race of the year at the Trinity Invitational. In finishing 22nd, Wilfert just missed out on becoming the fourth Jumbo in as many years to finish in the top 10 of the All-New England Championship.
"The course was muddy, and when it's dry and solid, it can be fast," Wilfert said. "Provided that it was muddy, my time was better than expected, but my place was not quite where I was hoping for it to be."
In addition to the muddy conditions, the race also contained the largest number of competitors that most Jumbos will run with this season.
"I think that it's always a hard race because of the sheer volume of people," sophomore Anya Price said. "It's crazy from the start, pace-wise … There's a large field that suddenly turns into a much smaller path, so naturally there's a lot of jostling and shuffling around. In general, there's slowing down around a bottleneck.
"It's tough to gauge your pace because you're never really sure how fast you're going with the pack," she continued. "Sometimes you get a little overzealous with so many competitors, and sometimes you're slowed down by the crowd." "In a race like that, because there are so many people, it's hard to keep in mind the team aspect," sophomore Bryn Kass added. "Instead of shooting for the teammate 200 yards in front of you, there's a mass of 100 girls in a 20-foot radius."
Kass and Price placed in their usual respective spots at second and third on the team. Kass came in 115th, 1:19 behind Wilfert and 28 seconds ahead of Price. While Wilfert and Kass improved on their times at the Championships last year, Price was disappointed with her performance, having slowed by 18 seconds from last year. But according to Wilfert, this was due to a cramp in Price's thigh suffered during the second mile.
"It could've gone better; we had some people who weren't feeling 100 percent," Price said. "I didn't have the best race. My body wasn't cooperating, and there have been some nagging injuries that we've been taking care of. I think there's always room to improve, and while there were definitely some great performances in our showing, it didn't fully represent what we can do. We're capable of taking it to another level."
Junior Jen Yih and sophomore Kelsey Picciuto rounded out Tufts' point-earners, coming in 176th and 207th, respectively. The top freshman on the squad was Julia Hajnoczky, who finished seventh for Tufts.
After racing just twice in September, Tufts will compete the next six weekends as the team prepares for conference and national championships, starting off with the Plansky Invitational at Williams on Saturday.
Wilfert plans to take two weekends off between now and mid-November as she hopes to peak around the NCAA Championship held on Nov. 21. Other Tufts runners will focus on training for the NESCAC Championship, held on Nov. 1 at Trinity.
"I think our goal really is to peak in hopes of qualifying for nationals," Kass said. "We definitely want to do well at NESCACs. We want to find out what our potential is in the next few weeks. We have a busy schedule, but you learn how you run every time you race, so it's good to get all these races under our belts. Every race is different, and though we don't expect to be at our maximum potential yet, we hope to learn enough and practice enough so we can eventually get there."
