The men and women of the Hillsdale College cross-country team are gearing up for a new season. Combined, men’s and women’s cross-country has sent two teams to nationals in the last ten years. Both coaches believe their young teams have legitimate shots at competing on Division II’s biggest stage.
Both men’s and women’s teams finished sixth at last year’s regional meet, both teams are ranked sixth entering this season, according to the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association, and both teams will need a fifth place regional finish to advance to the national meet.
Head men’s coach Jeff Forino said he doesn’t want his team to settle for anything less than nationals.
“To make it there would be huge,” he said. “We’ve made it there once in the last 10 years.”
Seniors Matt VanEgmond and Andrew Koehlinger are captaining the men’s team. Koehlinger said that while the team is young — 14 of 16 are underclassmen — they are all “dedicated to what we are trying to do” and have a good founda- tion of summer training to build
on.“[We had] a big freshman class come in. The sophomores are really on a whole new level from last year,” VanEgmond said. “I think we are looking good for a young team and we’ve definitely got a lot we can do this year.”
Forino agrees that the team looks good. He said he has four athletes he believes to be his core group and four or five other guys to rotate into the top five. The top five runners are scored in team cross coun- try meets.
“It’s gonna take those four guys being solid and someone to step up,” Forino said. “We can do really well this year — really well.”
The women’s team is coached by Andrew Towne. He said he believes the women to be off to a much better team start than last year and hopes the women will run tighter as a pack in races.
At the 2011 regional meet, five-time All-American Amanda Putt ’11 finished first. A minute and a half later, then-junior Victoria McCaffrey finished 25th. Another minute later, then- freshman Amy Kerst finished 78th.
“We had a three minute gap. That’s huge,” Towne said. “I bet you a minute and a half will be the biggest gap we have this year from one to five when it matters at the end.”
The women’s team will be led this season by senior captain
McCaffrey, who was All-Region last year. Like the male captains, she said her team’s youth — 11 of the 16 are underclassmen
— is reason to be excited for the season.
For some of the top women runners, last season was only their first or second season run- ning on a cross-country team.
“This year, with a completely fresh team, we have a really good shot of making it to na- tionals,” McCaffrey said.
Both teams competed in an intrasquad 4k time trial on August 22. For the men, the top three runners were sophomore Joshua Mirth (12:28), sopho- more Matt Perkins (12:48),
and sophomore Luke Hickman (12:54).
For the the women, Mc- Caffrey finished first (15:14), freshman Emily Oren second (16:02), and freshman Kristina Galat third (16:32).
VanEgmond said heat and travel-fatigue were factors in the race, but overall he thought it went well.
“I thought it was a solid start to see where we are at,” he said.
Friday, Sept. 7, the women and men will run another intra- squad meet at Hayden Park at 5 pm and 5:30 pm, respectively. Next week the men and women will travel to East Lansing for the Spartan Invitational.
