Sometimes things just aren't meant to be. There was little in the way of smiles on the bus ride home from Friday's Ivy League Heptagonal Cross-Country Championship meet for the Big Green after one of the more disappointing races of the year.
Both the men's and women's teams have been plagued by injuries this fall, preventing either squad from running at full strength. Dartmouth finished in seventh place in the men's category and eighth on the women's side out of the eight Ivy League schools that participated in the event.
The men seem to have run rather competitively individually, but simply failed to maintain the pack formation stressed by Coach Barry Harwick.
Co-captain Harry Norton ran the best race of his career on Van Cortlandt Park's five-mile course in the Bronx, N.Y., posting a time of 24:46. Norton took fifth place overall but his effort alone was not enough to offset the major gaps in times.
"We ran with confidence and hunger at the start, but I don't really know what happened after that," Glenn Randall '09 said. "Our spread was a lot bigger than it should have been."
Randall also gave a great performance, placing 15th overall with a time of 25:15.
"The first two runners were where they were supposed to be," Harwick said. "We were hoping that they would pull the rest of our pack along but that did not happen nearly as well as we had hoped."
The Princeton Tigers won Friday's meet with a total of just 38 points (Dartmouth had 148), successfully defending their 2006 Ivy League title.
Pat Dooley '08 hopes to be ready to race in the regional meet after being sidelined by injury the past several weeks. Should he return successfully and the rest of the team continues improving, there is no reason why Dartmouth could not pull off a major upset in two weeks.
"We are a much better team than our results showed," Randall said. "Last year Harvard came in last at Heps but then took fourth place at Regionals, so all bets are off. There aren't really any expectations on us, but if we pull off a good race, who knows what might happen."
The Big Green women have also had their ranks depleted by injury, and it showed on Friday as the team placed dead last out of eight teams.
The Princeton Tigers truly dominated the 5K race, taking three of the top five places en route to a winning score of just 25 points. Dartmouth's top finisher, Susan Dunklee '08, placed 25th overall with a time of 18:28 as the team amassed 229 points.
The team's next four runners were grouped from 48th through 53rd place. They maintained good group formation but simply did not start with a strong enough position.
"It just wasn't our day," Head Coach Maribel Souther said. "It has been a challenging, trying year, but I expect that we'll learn from this and get better."
"Hopefully our team can get past the illnesses and injuries we've been struggling with and come back stronger and more motivated for Regionals and the Indoor Track Finals," Lauren Campfield '11 said.
Both teams competed Sunday at the Mayor's Cup Race at Boston's Franklin Park, a small event designed to give younger runners some valuable competitive experience. The next major event, the NCAA Regional Meet, is set for Nov. 10, and will also be held at Franklin Park in Boston.
