Women's cross country placed 40th out of 45 teams in the Paul Short Invitational at Lehigh University on Oct. 1. Competing against Div. I programs, No. 6 Tufts was one of only three Div. III cross country programs in the race; the others were No. 5 Williams and No. 28 SUNY Oneonta. Most other Div. III teams who were invited to the race were placed in the Brown race, while the Jumbos competed in the Gold. One of Tufts' top runners, senior tri-captain Samantha Cox, was absent for the race.
Yale won the race, finishing with 92 points ahead of Georgetown's second-place 119. The University of Pennsylvania and the University of West Virginia tied for third with 127 points and the University of Florida finished fifth with 175. Williams finished ahead of Tufts in 23rd place overall, while SUNY-Oneonta finished one spot behind the Jumbos in 41st.
Head coach Kristen Morwick felt that the team faced competition that was out of its league.
"This was the second year we've done [the gold division of the invitational] and this year the competition was even stronger," Morwick said. "It would be like our basketball team scrimmaging UConn."
The team ran as a consolidated pack, with all Tufts runners finishing the race within a minute of one another. The Jumbos were again led by junior Brittany Bowman, who finished with a time of 21:56 and placed 174th. Bowman has led Tufts at every meet so far this season. Sophomore Natalie Bettez ran seven seconds behind her teammate and set a personal record with a time of 22:07, earning 193rd place. Senior tri-captain Alice Wasserman was the third scorer for Tufts, finishing in 22:19 and ranking 212th. Wasserman was immediately followed by senior Lindsay Atkeson who finished in 22:22 and placed 219th.Senior Kelly Fahey ran fifth for the Jumbos and completed the race in 22:43, arriving in 257th place.
Rounding out Tufts' top seven were senior Olivia Dehm and first-year Gia Kim who finished with the same time, 22:52. Dehm narrowly beat out Kim for 271st place and Kim placed 272nd. Junior Margot Rashba finished with a time of 23:07 and was unplaced.
The Jumbos have worked on their new pack strategy for the past few races, and although they did not place high in this race, running in a pack seems to be paying dividends since all the runners placed so closely together. Tufts started out slowly as a group and then accelerated as the race continued, using the sight of runners from other teams ahead of them to gain momentum.
Bettez felt that the strategy would be even more valuable against slower competition, as the fast start from other Div. I runners made some of the Jumbos exert too much effort in the beginning in an ill-fated attempt to keep up with them.
“For me personally, I feel like it was a really good experience ... I’d never run in a race that was that competitive and that fast, so that was really good. As a team, we did well. We would have liked to do better in comparison to Williams, but it’s also really early in the season so it’s hard to tell," Bettez said. "The purpose was going in to have that experience ... I’ve been told that this race is similar to how nationals feels. So, [we were] going in to see where we stand when we face off against better competition.”
In the lower-ranked Paul Short Brown race, Tufts (1:51:27) was out-timed by rival No. 23 Middlebury (1:50:06) but ran better times than No. 3 Johns Hopkins (1:52:31), the major rival that Tufts was looking to beat, and NESCAC rival No. 21 Amherst (1:52:36).
Next week, the Jumbos are competing in the James Earley Invitational on Saturday at Westfield State University, where they hope their experience racing against Div. I teams will help them finish even better.
Jumbos race Div. I teams at Paul Short Invitational
