It was a busy day of action for the Hopkins' Cross Country teams this Saturday, as the teams raced a combined three races. The top 12 runners of women's Cross Country competed at the Williams Purple Invitational, where they took first place over the top-ranked Division III team in the nation. The rest of the team traveled to York and finished fourth in the York Invitational. The men's Cross Country team also succeeded this week, winning first place at the York Invitational.
The Williams' Purple Valley Classic, held at Williams College, featured 12 schools in the six-kilometer (3.7 mile) cross-country run.
The Blue Jays had three runners finish in the top five, and an additional two runners round out the top 10. Senior Laura Paulsen led the way, finishing in second place, behind Oberlin's Joanna Johnson, with a time of 22:24. Senior Mira Patel got the bronze with a time of 22:43 and sophomore Cecilia Furlong rounded out the top five with a time of 22:49. Junior Christina Valerio finished ninth with a time of 22:58 and freshman Liz Provost finished 10th with a time of 22:59.
A second pack of Hopkins runners, which included seniors Nadia McMillan (14th, 23:09) and Mary O' Grady (19th, 23:19), with junior Megan Brower (38th, 24:12), finished at solid placements.
"Going up to Williamstown, Mass., we were all really excited and focused on beating Middlebury who was ranked first in the nation," Paulsen said. "We knew that we were going to have to work on getting our top five to finish as close together as possible by running in packs and being patient in the beginning of the race. On Friday, we ran the course and went over what areas we'd have to be careful on and where we should start our finishing kicks. On Saturday, our race started at 12:45 p.m., so we had the morning to sleep in and get to the course at around 11:30 p.m. to watch the first race of the day. When it was time to start warming up we wanted to look as intimidating and unified as possible, so we all wore our same uniform warm-ups and ran in a group. We tried to relax and make some jokes to get rid of some pre-race jitters. At the starting line, we did our drills together, did a ferocious cheer, and then just calmed down and focused on what we needed to do."
"The race started really well - we all got out fast and then settled in to our packs and paces. We all were intent on beating Middlebury, so we weren't going to let any Middlebury people pass us at the end and we were going to give it our all in order to catch them if they were ahead of us near the end of the race. The course was really nice and there were nearly perfect running conditions, so we had a lot of fun. When we realized after people started finishing that we had won the meet, we were so excited and couldn't believe it!"
With these great performances, the team easily finished first with 29 points. Host school Williams finished in second with 55 points and Middlebury was third with 69 points. Oberlin (111) and Colby (139) finished in fourth and fifth respectively.
At the York Invitational at York College, the Hopkins men's cross-country team did not disappoint either. Junior Steven Tobochnik won the individual title, with a time of 25:40. Junior Derek Cheng finished in fourth place with a time of 26:38 and senior David Sigmon finished in sixth with a time of 26:26. Senior Michael Yuan also finished in the top 10, with a time of 26:50. Other strong contributions from the team came from junior Brandon Hahn (11th, 27:00), freshman Nicholas Kisley (13th, 27:13), senior Graham Belton (15th, 27:22) and sophomore Andrew Yen (16th, 27:22).
"This wasn't a very competitive meet, but Navy's B-team showed up and gave us some decent competition," said Tobochnik. "As a team, we are still figuring out which guys are in the top 10 for future meets with restrictions on the number of entries per race. We planned to win this meet pretty easily and that definitely worked out and went as planned. A number of our guys had big improvements from earlier in the season. Individually, I also planned to win. There was one other runner in the race who competed up front and pushed the pace, but I was able to pull away at the end."
The team easily won first with 31 points, while Navy was second with 53 points. Franklin & Marshall (97), host York (103) and McDaniel (144) rounded out the top five schools.
Both teams return to competition at the Paul Short Invitational on Friday at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pa. Over 110 schools will be competing at this meet.
"From this point on, we will be competing in much larger races with many of the top teams in the nation," said Tobochnik. "I think we have had a good start to the season and already having moved up in both regional and national rankings, we should be ready to compete against most of the other teams out there."
