Last Friday, the Hopkins cross country team participated in the 36th annual Paul Short Invitational in Lehigh, Pa. The women's team competed in the toughest division, the Gold Division, and placed 15th out of 40 schools. The men's team raced in the Brown Division, winning the bronze (third place) out of a group of 38 schools.
The Lady Blue Jays, currently in first place among Division III schools, was one of three Division III teams competing in a pool filled with Division I and II schools. They faced stiff competition but finished solidly at 15th.
Sophomore Neely Spence of Shippensburg University won the race, with a time of 19:58, but she wound up 23rd overall.
Representing Hopkins, senior Mira Patel led the way for the team, finishing 50th out of 363 total runners, with a time of 21:31. Patel got off to a great start and hung in the top pack where she ended up with a new 6k personal best time.
Other top finishers for Hopkins included the team leader, senior Laura Paulsen (82nd, 21:47), sophomore Cecilia Furlong (100th, 21:57), freshman Liz Provost (113th, 22:05), junior Christina Valerio (157th, 22:28), senior Nadia McMillan (179th, 22:39) and senior Mary O'Grady (188th, 22:44). The team's average time of 21:58 was a season best, and the top five runners all had personal best times.
The team finished with 502 points, good for 15th. West Virginia University, the fourth-ranked Division I team, came in first with 105 points. University of Guelph (127), Indiana University (143), North Carolina State (153) and Cornell University (183) rounded out the top five.
"The Paul Short Invitational was really intense, as in the Gold Race there were primarily Division I schools," Laura Paulsen said. "It was a good test-run for how Nationals might be since there were lots of people on the starting line and it was necessary to get a good start. We definitely learned a lot from this race since we didn't have our strongest team showing of the season."
Paulsen felt that she didn't run her strongest race, but is looking forward to the Jays' meet two weekends from now.
"I messed up the race pretty bad and didn't get out fast enough, causing me to have to put more effort into passing people during the second half of the race and then trying to make up for lost time, which didn't work so well," she said. "I'm looking forward to the Oberlin Inter-regional Rumble Meet, where I will try to improve my performance."
Meanwhile, the men's cross country team competed in the Brown Division, a race consisting of a mix of Division I, II, and III schools. Senior Ricky Flynn of Lynchburg College finished in first place, with a time of 24:43, and Lynchburg finished eighth overall.
Hopkins finished at an impressive third place. Junior Steve Tobochnik, a regular top finisher for Hopkins, again made it to the top ten, finishing tenth out of 323 runners with a time of 25:25. Other top finishers for Hopkins included senior David Sigmon (44th, 26:01), junior Derek Cheng (45th, 26:03), junior Brandon Hahn (74th, 26:21), senior Michael Yuan (99th, 26:32) and sophomore Andrew Yen (133rd, 26:47).
"This was a big meet with over 300 runners in our race and about 15 Division I teams," said Tobochnik. "Also, TCNJ was competing in our race and it was important to beat them because they were ranked ahead of us in the last national poll. We did that convincingly. I'm satisfied with our team performance as well as individually, although we all have some things to improve on in terms of racing strategy."
The team finished with 272 points, good for the bronze. Wayne State University, with 184 points, eked out a first place finish, narrowly defeating second-place Adelphi University (190). Gettysburg College (280) and Manhattan College (296) finished fourth and fifth respectively.
Both the women's and men's teams will resume competition on Saturday, October 17, with dual split squads at the Oberlin Inter-Regional and Gettysburg Invitational.
"At the next big race we have at Oberlin on October 17, we're really going to make more of an effort to pack up and go out hard, since that's a strategy that will enable us to do well at Nationals and that we lacked at Paul Short," Paulsenn said.
Paulsen also reiterated that it's important to not get too content, "We really need to focus again and not let rankings get to our heads. We don't have a meet this coming weekend, so we'll be able to get in some solid workouts and refocus on what we need to do to win Conferences, Regionals, and maybe even Nationals."
