Last Friday many Blue Jays took to the warm indoors as temperatures dropped and the incoming October weather began to push out the last remnants of summer. But not the Hopkins cross country team.
Along with men and women's head Coach Bobby Van Allen, the Jays made the three-hour haul out to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA where they competed in the 36th annual Paul Short Invitational.
The competition, which was their fourth of the season, proved to be an excellent venue to showcase Blue Jay talent with both teams placing well overall and individually.
The men's team competed in the Brown Race, which comprised 46 schools, and finished in ninth place overall. That finish was no small feat considering that the Paul Short Invitational is considerably larger than most of the competitions the Jays have been in thus far this season and was host to several top Division-III programs like Elizabethtown and Nebraska Wesleyan.
Individually, sophomore Max Robinson was Hopkins' premiere performer with a time of 26:15 and 26th-place finish out of 382 runners. Freshman Daivik Orth took 71st place with a time of 26:49, successfully appointing him JHU's second best runner of the weekend.
Robinson and Orth were followed by grad student Brett Schwartz and senior Andrew Yen who also finished one after another in 92nd and 93rd place.
Sophomores Ricky Mulroy and Julian Saliani along with junior Josh Budman also finished in the top 100, putting all seven performers in the top 26th-percentile.
The women's squad, on the other hand, competed in the Gold Race. Hopkins was one of just two D-III programs in the race along with St. Lawrence. While some might consider competing against Division-I schools a bit of a hindrance, the Lady Jays didn't seem to be phased.
Freshman Hannah Eckstein finished as JHU's top female performer with a time of 22:30 and 143rd place finish out of 396 runners.
Fellow freshmen Lindsey Sanborn and Ashley Murphy finished as Hopkins's second and third best runners, sharing a time of 23:04 and taking home 189th and 190th place overall.
As a team, the Lady Jays finished in 29th place out of 45 participating teams.
Eckstein, who has already been named a Centennial Conference co-runner of the week, has high hopes for this season.
"I want to keep running fast and build up my times," the New Jerseyan said. Eckstein, who has been running cross country since her freshmen year of high school attributes her success to her workout routines. In high school, she ran shorter distance, but now for college competitions, she runs longer distances and practices daily.
Both JHU teams started their pre-season in mid-August to make sure they were well-prepared.
Eckstein describes her team as a close-knit group who does everything from doing homework to eating dinner together.
"Officially we practice six days a week but we run together everyday," she said. "We're all really good friends. We even do pool runs together in the morning."
The team considered the Paul Short Invitational to be an opportunity to test their preparedness for the season, as the competition pool was significantly larger than anything they'd faced so far.
"It was a little daunting," Eckstein said, "but there was not a lot of pressure because you weren't in your own conference. We've got to get out there and see how we compare against schools we don't usually compete against."
Besides the obvious physical benefits of being a cross country runner, Eckstein says that being on the team also comes with some other benefits as well. The most beneficial being discipline.
"We had a day off from practice and at the end of it we all got together and no one had gotten any work done. When we have practice it helps us to manage our time better and it makes it easier to get things done," she said.
With both the men's and women's teams off to a great start, they look forward to competing next week in the Goucher and Santa Clara Invitationals on Oct. 15th.
