Both the women and men’s cross country teams competed on their home course, hosting the Aldrich Invitational this Saturday, Sept. 19.
Five teams constituted the women’s competition: Middlebury College, Le Moyne College, Saint Michael’s College, Norwich University and Paul Smith’s College, while the men competed against only Norwich College, Le Moyne College and Paul Smith’s College.
Middlebury dominated the competition on both the men’s and women’s sides Saturday. The women filled the first nine places, scoring only 15 points in comparison to 64 points scored by second place Le Moyne College. The top five finishers for the women were Abigail Nadler ’19, Robin Vincent ’18, Erzsie Nagy ’17 and seniors Adrian Walsh ’16 and Katherine Tercek ’16.
Nadler enjoyed a great first race in her collegiate career at home.
“It was really nice to have my first college cross country race at Middlebury in front of friends, and my family came out,” Nadler said.
In respect to her race, she spoke of how she was able to run with other girls on the team and “build momentum.”
On the men’s side, the top five scorers were Sam Klockenkemper ’17, Miles Meijer ’19, Sebastian Matt ’16, Brian Rich ’17 and, lastly, Tim McGovern ’18 in sixth place.
Klockenkemper most enjoyed being out on the home course surrounded by his teammates.
“It was just super neato to put in a good effort with all the guys,” Klockenkemper said.
Miles responded similarly, excited about the freshman class as a whole.
“It was neat to have such a great group of freshmen for the whole first half of the race,” he said.
The team trained hard the past few weeks and coach Nicole Wilkerson said this factor and the weather were reflected in the times from the competition.
“I was pleased with the results; it was really great to have the first-years in uniform and racing with the team.,” Wilkerson said. “We have a strong class of first-year men and women and it was exciting to see their debut. The times were a bit off, but we had a hard week of training, coupled with racing in temps in the mid-80’s, so I am not concerned.”
Overall, the men filled eight out of the first ten places. This brought their team score to 16, again far lower than second place Norwich University with 56 points. Le Moyne and Paul Smith’s followed Norwich on the men’s side. On the women’s side, Saint Michael’s, Norwich and Paul Smith’s followed Le Moyne.
Middlebury travels to Williams next weekend, Saturday, Sept. 26, to race in a larger invitational against some of the top teams in the NESCAC. Runners and Wilkerson are both excited for what is to come.
When asked about this past and next weekends races, Klockenkemper expressed that the team is “really fit right now and excited for what’s to come.”
”We’re really looking forward to toeing the line with a lot of the teams in the conference this coming weekend when we race at Williams,” Wilkerson added.
