Women Harriers Second at Regionals, Advance to NCAA Championship
The top 35 finishers are all members of the All-Region Team.
The Ephs battled the rain and the competition today at the NCAA Northeast Regional Meet, which Williams hosted at Mt. Greylock High School. Middlebury placed first as a team, scoring 57 points. The Ephs followed in second place with 87 points. Both teams will automatically advance to the NCAA Championship Cross Country Meet, next weekend, hosted by Hanover College, in Hanover, Indiana. Up to three more teams from the Northeast have the potential to advance to the Championship on the decision of a committee of coaches.
Coach Pete Farwell was pleased with the performance, commenting, "What a day. The coaching staff is overjoyed with how the meet went on three accounts: the weather behaved just well enough; the meet went superbly because of the great help of all the team supporters; and it was great to have both the Men's and Women's teams run so well on the same day."
Senior captain Lauren Philbrook had a phenomenal day, placing 2nd overall in 22:28. Only Amherst's Elise Tropiano was able to outrun her. Tropiano won in a time of 21:49. Middlebury sneaked in four runners in front of the second Williams runner, Bret Scofield, who came in 15th with senior captain Rachel Asher and sophomore Meghan Shea right on her heals in 17th and 18th places respectively. Rounding out the top five was senoir Robin Kuntz who finished neck and neck with 6th man, Elly Teitsworth. Jess Clarke completed the Varsity runners, and with her 33rd place ensured that the Ephs placed all of their runners in the first 10th of the field (there were 330 female finishers).
The Ephs continued to display a great show of team work as many of the women ran together and worked off each other for large parts of the race. Junior Bret Scofield, who is an All-American in Track and Field, comments on the race: "It was a really good team race. Pete told us to go out there and relax and run as a team, and that's what we did. It was nice to run with Meghan And Jess for the first two miles."
Captain Rachel Asher commented after her race, "We had to switch the team up this week because of injury, but we had some strong ECAC runners step up and perform. It was exciting to have this meet at home because we know this course so well." The home crowd atmosphere was great with many fans lining the course that and the team has worked hard to perform this whole week. Senior Robin Kuntz, appreciated the enthusiastic fans, saying "Great cheering. I couldn t even think about the pain!"
The Ephs will fly out to Indiana later this week to gear up for the Championships at Hanover College next Saturday. Currently they are ranked 2nd nationally and the harriers are expected to have a good showing against the national competition.
