Let's play a word association game. I'll name a sport, and you shout out the first thing that comes to your mind. Dartmouth cross country -- that's right, Ben True '08!
Dartmouth's 2005 American and two-time Ivy League champion has dominated the competition for the past three seasons, but this year the team is without its prodigy as he skis in Idaho during an off term.
With True out of the picture, many have already written off this season as a rebuilding year.
"But our team is in a very good position to surprise," Coach Barry Harwick said.
Rife with young talent, the squad has surpassed expectations so far and looks to build on solid individual performances over the past several meets. This weekend, the team headed to Boston's Franklin Park for the New England Championships, a massive meet pitting over 40 schools from all three divisions against one another.
"We rested our top seven runners this week in preparation for [this] week's NCAA preliminaries and gave some of our younger athletes a chance to prove themselves," Harwick said.
Several of the team's younger members took advantage of the opportunity, most notably Hari Iyer '09. Iyer led the Big Green with a time of 25:41 on the 4.95-mile course and placed 17th out of over 300 entrants while earning All-New England honors.
"He competed extremely well and has earned a spot on our roster for the Ivy League Championships in New York City at the end of the month," Harwick said.
Another strong performance was posted by Andy Han '09, who finished 45th overall with a time of 26:06.
The Big Green took 18th place out of 43 schools and now looks forward to several important meets during the next three weeks.
"For those of us who competed today, our sights are now set on the Ivy League Championships," Iyer said. "It should prove to be an exciting race, as many of the teams are comparable in talent level. We have as a good a shot as anyone to win another title and are hoping that we do."
The women's cross country team also raced in the New England Championships Saturday, finishing 25th of 44 teams. While several freshmen had impressive performances, Coach Maribel Souther was slightly disappointed with the team's overall finish.
"We did not run as well as I had hoped," Souther said. "The conditions were slow overall due to the heat, which was certainly a factor as to why the times were slower than I had anticipated."
Rookies Rachel Gill '11 and Lauren Rosenbaum '11 turned in strong times of 19:28 and 20:09 while placing 55th and 108th, respectively, on Franklin Park's 5k course.
Saturday's success continued a streak of increasingly promising performances by the men's team. Team captains Harry Norton '08 and Grant Allen '08 have stepped up to fill leadership roles, and Patrick Dooley '08 claimed first place in the Big Green's only home meet on Sept. 8.
Several young runners also have a chance to shine in upcoming weeks, especially top recruit Tom Robbins '11. Robbins has shown himself to be a dangerous competitor thus far at the Division I level, taking sixth place overall on Sept. 29 at the Keatinge Invitational. Iyer and Han demonstrated this weekend that they, too, are ready to contribute to a push for the Ivy League title.
Coach Souther hopes to emphasize running as a pack during this week's women's NCAA preliminaries.
"I encourage the team to stay together, communicate, and run for one another," the coach said. "We are a much better team than our results have shown and have been working on running with more confidence and fire."
The Dartmouth women are led this year by a trio of seniors: Susan Dunklee '08, Elisa McCarthy '08, and Lauren Moser '08. Souther will also rely heavily on a core of younger runners, including Caitlin Cunningham '09, Aryn Gruneisen '09, Laura Tabor '10, Lauren Campfield '11 and Andrea Imhof '11. The women have fared rather well in this season's earlier meets, placing second at the Dartmouth invitational on Sept. 8 and fifth at Keatinge on Sept. 29. But there is definitely room for improvement.
Both squads fly their fully rested top runners to Indiana this week for Saturday's NCAA preliminary meet at Indiana State. The race should be a solid indicator of how much the teams have progressed since the start of the season. The Big Green women look to turn the corner toward consistency while the men seek to surprise skeptics and prove that their team can be dominant with or without True, who returns this winter.
