Storm Nemo ravished the New England coast this past weekend, stranding coaches and runners on the men’s and women’s track teams in Boston.
Sixteen team members and their coaches headed to Boston Wednesday night. According to senior Becky Caywood, the women had a meet at Boston College on Friday and the men on Saturday. However, they shortly heard that the meet was cancelled due to the storm. Caywood said they were surprised because at the time, the sun was shining. Even with the cancelled meet, they had to keep practicing. They went to practice at Harvard on Thursday and Friday morning before the storm.
Head women’s coach Andrew Towne explained it was very important for the team to continue with training regardless of the cancelled meets.
“This is one of those unfortunate things you cannot do anything about,” Towne said.
Towne called around, trying to schedule a meet with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and Tufts University. M.I.T. cancelled its meet altogether, but the team was able to go to the meet at Tufts on Monday.
Despite the delays, Towne said the team kept up their morale and did well at the meet. Victoria McCaffrey said the girls ran solid races, winning the distance medley relay which put them in 11th place nationally.
“The kids did a good job at making the best of the situation. They realized it was something that was out of their control,” Towne said.
Senior Michael Shaw said they have to keep training so they do not suffer in next weekend’s meet and were therefore very fortunate to get into another meet in Boston. At this point in the season, the teams have a very specific training schedule and they had to shuffle things around to keep up due to all the cancellations.
“It felt good to race again after being cooped up in a hotel,” McCaffrey said.
After leaving Tufts at 9 p.m. Monday night, the team moved to a different hotel closer to the airport. Their first flight left at 4 a.m., but their next flight from Newark to Detroit was delayed.
“It has turned into an adventure – we have been up for all but three of the last 36 hours,” Shaw said Tuesday morning.
In the end, the team made it back to campus in one piece on Tuesday afternoon.
“We are definitely happy to be back,” McCaffrey said. “I never thought I would miss Hillsdale so much.”
Because the track team takes the trip annually, they plan on returning next year – hopefully this time without 27.5 inches of snow.
