The main lesson of the meet: the first-years are for real. While the cross country season starred a number of veteran runners, the rookies performed well this past weekend, in some cases barely tapping their potential. As the underclassmen work more with the Amherst coaching staff and learn from their more-experienced teammates, their finishes
should only improve.
Women
The women, unsurprisingly, were led by co-captain Heather Wilson ’08, the team’s top runner all fall. Deciding to postpone her layoff between seasons in hopes of qualifying early for Nationals, she finished third in the 5,000-meter run—sufficient for a provisional qualification. Caitlin McDermott-Murphy ’09 also decided to postpone her break and, while she didn’t convert her first chance of the season to qualify for NCAAs, she did convincingly win the mile in barely more than five minutes.
Susan Wasserman ’11 also performed well, especially considering it was the first college meet of her career. In addition to winning her section of the 500-meter dash, she helped the Jeffs’ top relay team, which also included Kate Silverman ’09, Hoiwan Cheung ’10 and Carly Levenson ’09, to a 12th-place finish.
Men
The men, like the women, received strong contributions from both veterans and newcomers. Veteran Rom Cabeza ’08 finished the 800-meter run in just under two minutes to grab third place. Senior captain Steve Shashy similarly opened the season strong, setting a personal record in the 400-meter dash and nearly doing the same in the 200-meter dash.
Meanwhile, rookies Taylor Perkins and Ryan Drost impressed in their debuts; Perkins won his sections in both the 400 and the 200, and Drost took first in his section of the 500.