Both the men’s and women’s cross country teams competed at the University of Albany Invitational on Saturday, Oct. 17. The meet was full of competition, as the Panthers once again competed against mostly Division I schools, making both team’s performances all the more impressive. The women finished third out of thirteen teams and the men won the meet, championing a field of fourteen teams.
The Middlebury men’s team edged out Siena College by a single point and third-place Marist by four. The competition was close, but the men persevered, even while missing three runners of their Varsity team.
“We raced well regardless and didn’t let ourselves get complacent behind our opponents, proven by the fact that we won by one point,” Chony Aispuro ’18 said. “In the running world this means our team pushed itself to pass as many opponents as possible; every runner matters and we didn’t let any get away from us to take the win.”
The top seven for the men were Sebastian Matt ’16 (3), Aispuro (6), Samuel Klockenkemper ’17 (15), Connor Evans ’19 (24), Harrison Knowlton ’19 (26), Kevin Serrao ’18 (40) and Tim McGovern ’18 (43). The top five scoring places brought the team to a score of 74.
The women also had an impressive performance at Albany.
“Initially we were a little disappointed with third place because we’ve been racing really well, but our scoring was very successful in this tight race and we scored better than we have in the past two years when we had very strong teams,” Adrian Walsh ’16 said.
The top seven finishers for the women were Abigail Nadler ’19 (2), Katherine Tercek ’16 (15), Emma DeCamp ’17 (21), Walsh (23), Katherine MacCary ’19 (24), Robin Vincent ’18 (27) and Sasha Whittle ’17 (32). The top five finishers brought the team score to 85 points, just three seconds behind second place Marist. Additionally, the spread between first and fifth finishers on Middlebury was only 51 seconds, indicating a very strong team performance on this windy Saturday.
“The results showed how deep the talent is for the women’s squad,” Tercek said. “The time lapse between our top seven runners was less than a minute. We want to get that gap to be as small as possible with championship season beginning in two weeks with NESCACS.”
Following a successful weekend at Albany the team is looking forward to championship season.
“Yesterday was just a fun meet,” Head Coach Nicole Wilkerson said. “The men raced without three of the top guys so their win was especially sweet. The women raced well, although they came out in 3rd. I am so excited for our conference meet on the 31st and glad we have an rest weekend before it. Our women’s team has narrowed our margin between 1-5 and we are just incredibly deep and strong. On the men’s side, the conference is very talented and deep this year, where more than half of the conference is ranked nationally.”
The teams rest this weekend, before returning for the NESCAC championship meet Saturday, Oct. 31 at Wesleyan.
