After taking last weekend off from competitions, the men and womens varsity cross country teams had a great showing this weekend at the New England College Cross Country Championships. The Mens team was able to place 20th overall at this race while achieving the 8th highest point total of any division three team at the meet. The women were similarly 20th at the meet with a ranking of 9th out of all the division three squads present this Saturday. The teams achieved stand-out performances on the Franklin Park course for both the Mens and Womens squads.
The mens team had a difficult day with two of their top runners, Dan Suher 08 and Matt Jennings 09 absent from the competition. The Judges, nevertheless, performed well and other squad mates stepped up to fill in the gaps. The team was led this week by Tim Condon 08 who was able to place 63rd with a time of 25:44 seconds. Teammate Joel Sunshine 07 was just one second behind and was able to secure 66th place for the judges. John Guilinger 08 finished the race in 25:53 seconds earning him 82nd place. Brain McDonald 10 finished with just over 26 minutes to earn 114th place while teammate Mike Stone 09 finished off the top-five scorers.
The women had similar success on their five kilometer course at Franklin Park this weekend. Megan Bisceglia 07 finished in just under 19 minutes to earn her 58th place overall at the meet, first among Brandeis runners. Teammate Camille Stevens-Runnan 07 finished a hair after 19 minutes to earn the Judges 76th place while teammate Emily Terrin 08 ran a race of 19:34 to place 137th overall. Katy Aguile 09 finished just behind, earning 147th place and Mary Schillinger 07 finished barely less than 20 minutes, finishing the Brandeis scorings at 184th place.
The teams were optimistic about their recent exhibition and believe that their showing is an indicator of their strength altogether. Assistant Coach Pete Samson explained that the Mens team could have done even better had we had Dan Suher and Matt Jennings, but both teams ended up doing really well. Runner Emily Terrin had similar comments and said that everyone did really well and a lot of us got our personal records. Rookie Brian McDonald commented that last Saturdays meet was the first meet against real competition. He went onto explain that the team performed well even when missing our top two runners.
The Judges only have a few more weekends of competition before they attend their league championship meet at Washington University in St. Louis at the end of the month. They then have more championship meets throughout November until the season ends later that month. Still, the Cross-Country teams have gotten some fast, championship running under their feet and are more ready than ever to take on the UAA challengers in just a couple of weeks.
