Cross country stays close

While most of us were busy moving in for the new semester, the Varsity Cross-Country team was busy competing in tournaments.

Both the Men's and Women's Cross-Country teams opened the season at the Baltimore Metro Invitational on Sept. 1 with fourth-place finishes.

On the men's side, freshman Eric Scrivner led the Blue Jays with a time of 29:54 and a 20th-place finish. Right behind Scrivner was senior captain John Apperson in 21st-place with a time of 29:59.

For the women, sophomore Heather Blair led four finishers in the top 20. Blair's time of 19:56 was good for sixth-place, while junior Hilary Knipe (20:29) finished 12th, freshman Tiffany Miceli (20:31) finished13th and senior Mary Stahley (21:07) took 20th place.

Both the men and women ran a crushingly close duel meet at Swarthmore last Saturday, bringing impressive individual finishes, but overall team losses.

For the women, freshman sensation Tiffany Miceli gracefully led the women's team, but they still fell 31-24 overall. She won the 2.1-mile course by six seconds with a time of 14:05. This was the first time in over four years that the women's team had an individual winner at a competitive meet.

Knipe was the second female Blue Jay finisher with a time of 14:23, finishing fourth overall. She was followed by freshman Peggy Chu in seventh-place (14:44), senior co-captain Mary Stahley in ninth-place (14:55) and junior Lisa Yagi in 10th-place (15:17).

"The team has a lot of depth and we had a positive meet," said Stahley, "Our main focus though is on the Conference championships.

The Men's Cross-Country team ran an extremely close match with Swarthmore, but narrowly lost 29-26.

Freshman Gavin Barnhard commented that "the team has been really motivated and there's a lot of camaraderie amongst all of us." Sophomore Steven Chu led the Blue Jays with a third-place finish in a time of 23:37. Senior John Apperson, who was the second Blue Jay finisher in the season-opening meet, tied for fifth-place with freshman Daniel Raposa with a time of 24:19.

Rounding out the top-five finishers for Hopkins were junior Jamie Parks in seventh-place with a time of 24:31 and junior David Courson in eighth-place at a 24:36.

The Jays will race next weekend at the famous Van Cortlandt course at the New York University Invitational. The team hopes to improve on last year, when the women placed 10th out of 37 teams and the men 16th of 36.