Gould, Fahey lead Jumbos to third-place finish

On a hot and sunny day in Williamstown, Mass., the women's cross country team faced its stiffest competition so far this season at Williams' Purple Valley Classic, hosted at Mount Greylock High School. This meet served as a tune-up for New England Div. III Regionals, featuring a majority of the top teams that will be competing against each other for an automatic or at-large bid to the NCAA Div. III Championships at this same course on Nov. 15.

Led by strong performances from junior co-captain Audrey Gould, sophomore Kelly Fahey and junior Olivia Beltrani, the No. 14-ranked Jumbos scored 95 points on the six-kilometer course to take third place, behind No. 4 MIT and No. 8 Middlebury.

The course at Mount Greylock High School is one of the hilliest in the New England region, as runners must first cross a flat field before heading into the woods toward a precipitous ascent, including a 300-meter-long hill at the end of the section in the woods. As a result, and due to the hot conditions (high temperatures were in the 70s), the athletes' times were much slower than expected.

"Our strategy for this weekend was to work in pairs or packs, since we have a very large team," senior co-captain Caroline Kimball-Katz said. "There is strength in numbers, and our team exemplifies that perfectly."

Gould, Fahey and Beltrani maneuvered to the front quickly and did not let up. Gould took third overall in the race, running 22:36.2, behind the winner, sophomore Sarah Quinn of MIT, who ran a 22:23.9, and teammate Maryann Gong, who finished just six seconds behind with a time of 22:29.9. Fahey followed closely, running a time of 22:53.4 for seventh overall, while Beltrani was just a few short ticks away, clocking a time of 23:04.2 to place 12th overall.

The Jumbos battled hard to nab high finishes in the final two scoring positions, as returning varsity sophomore Lindsay Atkeson placed 30th overall with a time of 23:40.8, and sophomore Alice Wasserman placed 46th in a time of 24:03.4. Wasserman was followed closely behind by freshman Brittany Bowman, who finished 55th overall in a time of 24:14.8 and freshman Evie Heffernan, who finished 60th overall in a time of 24:26.4.

Eight-hundred-meter specialist junior Sydney Smith, running only her second cross country race in college, just missed placing in the top seven for the Jumbos, taking 63rd in a time of 24:30.7.

"The course wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be," Bowman said. "Although there were one or two decent-sized hills, we have been doing hill repeats on much larger hills over the past few weeks to prepare us for the meet."

Despite the increase from the typical high school five-kilometer race to the collegiate six-kilometer race, Bowman was unfazed.

"While racing, there were plenty of runners to race the course with and enough enthusiasm from the sidelines to distract me from the fact that I was running an extra kilometer than I'm used to," Bowman said. "My strategy was to stay with the pack of other Tufts runners and to use the hills to my advantage to pass runners from other teams."

However, Bowman still saw room for improvement.

"Next race, I need to start out more conservatively at the beginning of the race so I still have some speed for a good finish, and I need to hydrate more," she said.

Although it appears that Tufts pulled off a surprise upset of No. 2-ranked Williams, whom Tufts defeated by 20 points, Williams did not run any its freshmen -- some of whom could be in the top seven -- in the varsity race, instead choosing to run them in the junior varsity five-kilometer race. In that race, the Williams freshmen took the top four spots as well as the sixth spot en route to a resounding victory over second-place Keene State, who finished with 84 points.

"While we're psyched to have beaten Williams, what's more important is that many members of our team had great races on a tough course that we will return to later this season for NCAA Div. III Regionals," Kimball-Katz said. "As a captain, the morale-booster was that so many girls on the team came away from that race with a newfound love for hilly courses, which is something that was clear from the race results."

The Jumbos will have next weekend off and will then compete at the NEICAA Championship meet held at historic Franklin Park in two weeks, where they will face competition hailing from all three major NCAA divisions.

"All New Englands will be another opportunity for our team to race talent from all over our region as well as teams from Div. I and Div. II," Kimball-Katz said. "It's easy to get intimidated by the enormous field entered in this race, but we can go into it knowing we are one of the top Div. III teams in New England, so that is exactly how we will race."