The Amherst men’s and women’s cross country teams raced against some serious competitors this past weekend, chief among them influenza. Sickness prevented two of the ladies’ top seven runners from competing at the Williams Purple Valley Classic, while a number of men battled valiantly through the sniffles. At the end of the day, though, the epidemic was not a deal breaker, as the women came away with a third-place finish, while the men took home second.
Women
Once again, Elise Tropiano ’09 afflicted herself upon the rest of the field. The senior All-American hammered the 6-kilometer race in 22:00, beating all other runners by 30 seconds. “It was pretty refreshing to get out there and go for it,” she noted. Sophie Galleher ’10 put in a similarly impressive performance, finishing with a time of 23:04, good enough for fourth place. Galleher showed off some of her anaerobic chops, keeping a Purple Cow and a Panther at bay in the race’s final stretch.
The normally reliable duo of Nicole Anderson ’09 and Caitlin McDermott-Murphy ’09 would have finished close to Galleher, but the epidemic kept them out of the race. While these two spent their time under some foul metaphorical weather, freshman Shannon McKenna finished third for the team under some more favorable weather conditions, which were cool and overcast—the kind of climatic milieu cross-country runners dream of. McKenna excelled on the hilly Williams course. She noted that the serenity of the location echoed the cornfields of her native Iowa. Her inner peace propelled her to a time of 24:12 and 25th place in the race. “Ned told us to go out and run our own race and try to step up to fill some of the missing spots,” she said. Zandra Walton ’09, Liz Dalton ’09, Christina Wong ’11 and Melissa Pritchard ’11 rounded out the Amherst top seven and provided some much-needed depth for the Jeffs by finishing within 13 seconds of each other.
Amherst finished in third place with 99 points. NESCAC rivals Middlebury finished in second with 68 points, while Williams captured first place with a 38-point team total, 61 points ahead of the Lord Jeffs. But Dalton is not panicking. “I definitely think that we have the ability to beat Williams and Middlebury when everyone is healthy and we’re racing with the full team,” she said. Tropiano, evidently still hungry after devouring the competition this weekend, put it more bluntly, “Williams and Middlebury are for sure beatable. When we get Caitlin and Nicole back, they’re toast.”
Men
While the women were worrying about runners down, the men were busy finishing runners up. The Lord Jeffs dissed the disease with a solid team showing, losing to Williams by a mere 15 points. Sophomore Ben Mears was pleased with the results. “We really wanted to get out strong in this race and establish ourselves early. We had a few guys a little bit sick, but our depth really came through for us,” he said. “Williams looks strong this year. To beat them, we are going to have to work on breaking up their two through five, which will require a complete team effort.”
Much of the credit for Amherst’s second-place finish goes to Daniel Murner ’10, who ran an intelligent, calculated race on his way to a fourth-place finish. The quiet, unassuming Southerner has said on numerous occasions that he models his running style on his home state’s most important event—the Kentucky Derby. The winning horses, he noted, are often the ones that go out slow and gather momentum throughout the race. Murner was particularly pleased with the Jeffs’ ability to bounce back from a loss to Keene State at last week’s UMass Dartmouth meet. “Keene beat us by a sizable margin on a flat course last week,” he said. “But this week we beat them by over 60 points on a hilly course. We will be back on the same hilly Williams course for Regionals, which will work to our advantage.”
Following in Murner’s equine footsteps was Will Yochum ’11. The floppy-haired Californian finished one place back, taking fifth in 26:37. Mears, meanwhile, averaged 5:25 per mile on the 8-kilometer course to finish in 13th place. Eric Holoday ’10 once again put in a solid performance, his short stride carrying his diminutive frame to a 15th place finish and a time of 27:00. Brooding junior tri-captain Carlyle “Turbo” Eubank channeled his wonderful Scottish first name to get over the Williams highlands, finishing sixth for the Lord Jeffs. Fellow captain Harrison Lakehomer ’09 and Jimmy Swanson ’10 rounded out the Amherst top seven. William Bell ’10, meanwhile, impressed in his first race back following a nagging knee injury. His long, loping strides whisked him to a 17:47 on the 5-kilometer JV course.
With no meet scheduled for next weekend, the men’s and women’s teams will put in two solid weeks of training that will be crucial to the championship season, which begins nominally with Amherst’s next meet—the Open New England Championships in Boston. Lakehomer in particular is looking forward to the upcoming weeks. “Hopefully when we start to really focus on racing,” he said, “we’ll be seeing complete team performances with good individual performances from top to bottom.”