Men's cross country places seventh at NESCAC Championship, looks to Regionals

Tufts hosted the 2018 NESCAC Cross Country Championship at Franklin Park in Boston on Saturday, claiming seventh place as Amherst established itself as the conference champion for the second straight year.

The Jumbos totaled 159 points, coming just shy of the sixth-place Bowdoin Polar Bears (156 points). Tufts was outperformed by some of its NESCAC rivals, including Williams, Middlebury, Bates and Conn. College, which claimed the second through fifth positions. Amherst dominated the meet, compiling just 60 points from its top five runners.

The top performer for the Jumbos was senior co-captain Colin Raposo, who finished 14th overall with a time of 26:07.5, earning Second Team All-NESCAC honors.

“My goal was to get All-NESCAC, which is top 14 finishers," Raposo said. "My goal going into the race was to get into the top pack of the race and be in the mix and see what I could do.”

Finishing behind Raposo was fellow senior co-captain Brian Reaney who claimed second place for Tufts and 24th overall with a time of 26:21.0.

“For me, I was coming off an injury and a week of not running, so I was a bit worried that I was not gonna have enough fitness to perform well,” Reaney said. “I’m pretty happy with my finish. I think I did a pretty good job of moving up through the race and trying to pick people off. But I definitely feel like I have a lot more left in me for the next race.”

Seniors Andrew Doherty Munro and Rory Buckman finished together in 37th and 38th places, respectively, with the former finishing a second faster at 26:45.5. Sophomore Peter Horvath rounded up the scoring positions for Tufts with a 47th-place finish of 26:53.2. Wrapping up the top seven were sophomore Patrick Nero (27:02.8) and first-year John Cyprus (27:08.9). 

Overall, the Jumbos were hoping for more from the NESCAC Championship. The weather was a disrupting factor, but the team still thinks it could have performed better despite the rough conditions.

“It was a tough day for the Jumbos," Reaney said. "We were going into it hoping for fourth or better. I think there were different things that happened with different people, and we don’t want to make excuses. Obviously, the weather was a factor, but we went it to it focusing on the weather ... saying that’s something that affects everyone the same way, so there’s no reason we still can’t perform well."

Reaney described the tough conditions of running during New England’s first nor’easter of the season, although both he and Raposo stressed that the weather was not the reason for the team’s performance. 

"We stayed on the bus until it was time to warm up because we didn’t want to get cold or wet," Reaney said. "It was very gray. It was windy — there were definitely some strong gusts. It’s not often in a cross country race that you try to draft people, like letting them take the wind for you, but that was the case in some parts of the course ... [Throughout] the whole race, it was hard to make moves because if you accelerated on a lot of parts of the course, you would just slip in the mud and not get the traction you needed to move up."

Raposo and Reaney discussed how the conditions disrupted the expected results, with some runners finishing in wildly different times than anticipated while others unexpectedly claimed top-seven spots.

“As you look across results for the meet, a lot of teams’ orders of runners changed dramatically, and different people show up in these high pressure situations that also happen to have bad weather,” Raposo said.

Reaney said that he believes the team is determined to keep a positive outlook and to learn from the experience.

“I think that yesterday was mostly just a reminder that it’s great that we’ve come this far and we have the potential to succeed," Reaney said. "But we can’t just assume that it’s going to happen. We need to go out there and make it happen."

Despite the disappointing day, the team remains confident and in good spirits heading into the NCAA regional championship, which will be held on Nov. 10 at Bowdoin in Brunswick, Maine.

Raposo said that the team will take important lessons from this race as it prepares for Regionals.

“A big part of it is getting focused, knowing what we have to do in two weeks. At the Conn. College Invite a couple weeks ago, we ... very much just went and got after it from the gun, and we had five guys in the top 15 for the first two or three miles, [which] was really a big confidence boost for us. Yesterday, we definitely raced a bit more conservatively, trying to let the race pan out," Raposo said. "I think at Regionals, we’re going to go back to really trying to attack the race and really go at it from the gun. [NESCACs] was very much an off day for us, but truly as a team, we’re not down in the dumps about it ... We’re very much on the up-and-up."

Reaney said the Jumbos are hoping for at least fifth place at the NCAA Regionals, which would require beating some of the NESCAC teams that topped them this past weekend, as well as the neighboring MIT Engineers. Reaney said that setting a positive team atmosphere will be a key to the team's success.

“The senior class has talked about this. Our team thrives on positive energy and good vibes,” Reaney said. “So it’s important for us coming off of a meet like NESCACs to not wallow on it [and] instead remember what we’re capable of from the Conn. [College Invite], and move on and just be ready for a great race at Regionals."