The coaches and runners agreed: last Friday’s meet at Notre Dame University could have gone better.
The Hillsdale College men’s and women’s cross country teams finished 14th and 8th respectively, at the Notre Dame Invitational. Neither team ran how they wanted, coaches said.
Women’s head coach Andrew Towne attributed his team’s mediocre outing to an unfortunate starting position and botched race strategy.
Hillsdale’s placement at the starting line put them on the inside of the course’s early turns. At Notre Dame’s course, those turns are momentum-killingly sharp.
“We got pinched,” Towne said.
Partially as a result of that, the first mile of the 5,000 meter race was slow. Hillsdale made up for a lot of that lost time in the rest of the race – for example, freshman Julie Bos “rolled 40 or 50 runners” in the last two miles, Towne said.
But it wasn’t quite enough.
Sophomore Emily Oren, Hillsdale’s first female finisher, crossed the line at 39th in 18:35. Bos, making her varsity squad debut, got 43rd in 18:39. Sophomore Kristina Galet finished eight seconds behind her in 55th.
Senior Victoria McCaffrey and freshman Molly Oren, who also ran varsity for the first time, rounded out the Chargers’ top five.
Although the women didn’t perform spectacularly, Towne said that, if the team had run this race last year, he would have been “head over heals.” The team just has higher expectations this year.
“Compared to the past, we were much improved,” Towne said. “But we didn’t get as much out of everyone as we hoped.”
Higher expectations doesn’t figure into the mens team’s evaluation of their race, however: they just ran poorly.
“It was a disaster for all but one person,” junior Jack Butler said.
The “disaster” can partly be attributed to a tough workout the team ran just a few days before, head coach Jeff Forino said. The team “killed it” in the workout, Forino said, and he doesn’t think the Notre Dame race at all reflects the team’s strength.
He estimated that, on average, the whole field ran about a minute slower than in last year’s race.
“Above and beyond that, we just didn’t run well,” Forino said.
Freshman Joe Newcomb was Hillsdale’s one bright spot of the meet. He finished second for the team in 26:35 – a near personal record on a hot and humid day over a muddy course.
Junior Josh Mirth finished first for the team at 21st in a time of 26:08. Newcomb came in next in 40th place, and, nearly a minute later, freshman Luke Daigneault finished in 96th place.
Sophomore Nolan Wojtowicz, 101st, and junior Matt Perkins, 115th, were the last two scoring runners for team.
Butler and fellow junior Luke Hickman, normally top-five runners for the team, each finished about three minutes slower than their last race. Perkins finished two minutes slower.
“It was a difficult experience but we all survived and came out better for it,” Butler said.
The men’s and women’s varsity squads will next compete on Saturday in Somers, Wisc. This course is the same one where University of Wisconsin-Parkside will host the regional meet in just under a month.
The rest of the team will stay in Hillsdale where the college will host Michigan Intercollegiates at Hayden Park.
The Intercollegiates race begins on Friday at 4:45 p.m.
