The Men's and Women's Cross Country teams competed in the NCAA Mideast Regional Championships in Carlisle, Pennsylvania concluding their season this past Saturday. The women tied Carnegie Mellon with 365 total points. This was good enough for a 12th place finish out of 38 teams while the men finished a 20th out of 35 teams. Both squads had been aiming for a top 10 finish.
The women placed fourth amongst their Centennial Conference counterparts. Host school Dickinson won the championship with 68 points for the second straight year.
Dickinson also won the conference championship two weeks ago. Fellow conference foes Haverford (third) and Gettysburg (fifth) also finished ahead of Hopkins.
The women placed three in the top 56 out of 264 total runners. Sophomore Gloria Vasconcellos was Hopkins' top finisher in 45th place with a time of 24:29, her fastest of the year. Running with her almost the entire way were seniors Aline Bernard, who placed 51st with a time of 24:41, and Anna Stirgwolt, whose time of 24:53 earned her a 56th place finish overall.
Freshman Jenni Wakeman and Christine Medina also ran well. Wakeman came in 89th with a time of 25:33 while Medina placed 124th in 26:15.
"Mideast Regionals were a great finish to our season," Wakeman said. "Although we were without two of our top girls, we managed to place fourth in the conference, thereby saying a lot about the heart and toughness of our team."
The team did manage to avenge a loss to Swarthmore College (15th) in the conference championships. The women also beat out Muhlenburg (13th) by a narrow margin of two points.
"I was tremendously proud of the women's team, of how we ran on Saturday, as well as how we came together as a team during the season," said head coach Bobby Van Allen. "They really finished on a strong note, putting everything they had out there on the course. I think this might have been our highest finish at the regional meet in a long time, at least since I've been here."
The men's team did not run as well, and their performance was reflected in their final team standing. Haverford won the team title with 64 points. Carnegie Mellon came in second with 73 points, and Elizabethtown came in third with 117 total team points.
"This season we dealt with a lot of adversity and ultimately, some disappointment. However, as the youngest team in the league, we'll ideally be able to use this to our advantage, and I'm predicting big things for us in the next few years," said sophomore Jason Farber.
The top Hopkins spot was claimed by sophomore Gabe Tonkin who placed 102nd with a time of 28:48. Eleven seconds behind him was sophomore teammate Andrew Bauerschmidt in 110th.
"Although we've had a few decent performances this season, I think it's time we stop blaming our poor performance this weekend on "being a young team" and things like that. Instead we really need to concentrate on our basics like more lifting, more solid milage over the summer and just putting a better overall effort if we want to make a better showing next year," said Bauerschmidt.
Freshmen Andrew Lewis and Travis Koh both ran the 8K race in 29:15, followed by junior Eric Scrivner in 129th a second later. Freshman Jason Chiang and Farber rounded out the top seven for the Blue Jays, placing 150th and 159th, respectively. The team was disappointed about their overall finish, as well as not having an individual place in the top 100 out of 249 runners.
Both teams look forward to beginning their Indoor Track Season on December 12th.
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