Sports

Fresh wave of talent kicks in for cross country

In print | September 17, 2009

On Saturday, for the first and only time this season, the Swarthmore men’s and women’s cross country teams ran their home course in the 35th annual Alumni Meet, wading through mud and puddles left by last week’s rainfall.

Both Garnet teams enter the year with high expectations and a stable core of returning veterans and first-years ready to contribute. But if they hope to improve on last year’s seventh place finish in the Centennial Conference Championship and 19th place showing at the Division III Mid-East Regionals, the men’s team, the largest in school history, will need strong leadership from key seniors Andrew Van Buren, Jonnie Tompkins and David Riccardi. The 19th place finish was the first time since 2004 that the Garnet did not finish in the top ten at the Regional meet.

Van Buren, the team’s lone captain, has made a concerted effort to help bring the young team together and to prepare them to compete at the collegiate level. “Andrew has done a great job as captain,” Jaymes Fairfax-Columbo ’10 said. “The team has great chemistry right now. When running, you have the opportunity to push each other to their full potential and to talk and bond.”

While Van Buren views the position of captain as an honor, he is aware of the importance of team unity. “[The position of] team captain is just a title,” Van Buren said. “We’re all teammates. We all work together. Win or lose, it is always a team effort.”

The Garnet lost its top two finishers from last year’s Centennial Conference Championship Meet, Erik Saka ’09 and Dan Hodson ’09, creating a major void at the top of the Swarthmore team. Saka placed 24th in the meet, but 14 of the 23 runners ahead of him were underclassmen last year, a clear indication that the Centennial Conference will continue to be highly competitive this season.
But a talented group of first-years will help Swarthmore to make a push toward the top of the conference.

Van Buren has been extremely impressed with the young talent thus far. “I’m really excited to have all the new freshman coming in. Some of the young guys had really good times in high school, and it looks like the team is going to get better not only this year but in years to come.”

According to Fairfax-Colombo, the strong finishers from last year will need to keep watch on these Swarthmore newcomers. “The first step to becoming competitive with the other teams in the conference was to bring in a strong recruiting class. We’ve done that. Our top four freshmen all have the potential to place really well at the conference championships and at regionals.”

Michael Fleischmann ’13 believes that the biggest transition from high school to collegiate level running is simply the number of miles to cover both in training and in competition. “I’ve been running more here than I ever ran in high school. We haven’t run any eight-kilometer races yet, so I guess that will be an adjustment as well,” he said. The standard length of a high school level cross country course is about five kilometers.

The top three finishers at the Alumni Meet were first-years Aidan DuMont-McCaffrey, Brian King and John McMinn respectively. Saka and Hodson both finished in the top 10, while Garret Ash ’05 was the highest-placing alumnus. Six of the top 18 finishers are members of the class of 2013. The young guns helped the Garnet men to defeat the alumni runners by a score of 39-19. The alums won last year’s meet.

On the women’s side, Caitlin Mullarkey ’09 led the way, finishing 26th overall. The women alumni defeated the current runners by a score of 28-27.

This year’s women’s team will be led by three veterans: Nyika Corbett ’10, Ashley Davies ’10 and Lauren Deluca ’10. All three have had storied careers. In each of her first three seasons, Corbett received all-Mideast Regional Honors. The women’s team finished seventh out of 44 teams at the regional meet last year.

While the ladies also lost several key members of their team to graduation, including Mullarkey and Bess Ritter ’09, Corbett is confident that the current squad will be quite competitive. “As the season progresses we will shift our focus from mileage to speed. So as far as race performances go, I’m expecting to see some impressive results as the season continues,” Corbett said, also noting the promise of a strong summer preseason turnout.

And building off of the preseason and early races, the ladies expect to be competitive as they race towards the championships. Corbett adds that the women are “already excited” to defend their Seven Sisters Championship at Mount Holyoke College on Oct. 17.

Davies, too, has set high goals for the season. Prepared to “get fierce on the race course,” Davies noted that the women will likely need to place in the top four at the regional meet in order to gain a berth in the NCAA team race. She’s not intimidated, though. “We have the determination and drive to get there,” she said.

The cross country teams will return to action at the Dickinson Long/Short Invitational on Saturday at 10:30 a.m.