The Dartmouth men's and women's cross country teams saw mixed results at the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships on Saturday in Princeton, N.J. The Big Green men rode top-10 finishes from Will Geoghegan '14 and Phil Royer '13 to a second consecutive third-place finish. The Dartmouth women, missing four of their top seven runners due to injuries, including defending champion Abbey D'Agostino '14, finished seventh overall.
The Dartmouth men tallied 77 points en route to third, beating out fourth-place Cornell University by six points. No. 23 Princeton University won the championship for the third year in a row with 26 points and placed three runners in the top four, including individual champion Chris Bendtsen, who finished the eight-kilometer course in 23:41. The Tigers' score of 26 points was the lowest winning total since 1997, while No. 10 Columbia University finished second with 58 points and two top-10 finishers.
Geoghegan and Royer finished three seconds apart, with times of 23:54 and 23:57 that were good enough for fifth and sixth, respectively. The race continued the strong fall season for Geoghegan and offered some redemption for Royer, who failed to finish at the 2011 Heps.
"It's been a really long year for me since that day," Royer, who finished 10th at Heps in 2010, said. "I had a foot injury last year, so I couldn't finish. I struggled with that injury for the winter, spring and even part of the summer. That's why this race was so important to me I was able to get back on my feet and get back to where I was my sophomore year."
Steve Mangan '14 finished 17th after running his best time of the season, finishing in 24:14. Dylan O'Sullivan '15 (23rd, 24:25) and Jonathan Gault '13 (27th, 24:30) were the final scorers for Dartmouth. Behind the top five, Dartmouth displayed impressive depth, as all 11 runners finished in the top 54 of the 89-person race.
"I think that we have one of the deepest teams in the league, if not the deepest," Geoghegan said. "We have a lot of people who can step up on any given day and score for us."
After beating fellow Ivies Brown University and Harvard University in a fifth-place finish at the Paul Short Run on Sept. 28, the Dartmouth women had high hopes for Heps as they looked to finish in the top half of the league for the first time since 2004. Since then, however, the team has been hit by a wave of injuries, most notably a hip ailment that caused All-American D'Agostino to miss the Wisconsin Adidas Invitational and Saturday's Heps. Christie Rutledge '16, the team's second finisher at Paul Short, and Sarah DeLozier '15 and Sarah Bennett '16, both of whom finished in the team's top six at Paul Short, all did not start at Heps.
Though Dana Giordano '16 ran a fine race to finish in 14th as the top freshman, the team performance suffered, as the Big Green placed seventh with 162 points. Giordano covered the six-kilometer course in 20:56, 28 seconds behind individual champion Katie Kellner of No. 7 Cornell. Led by Kellner, the Big Red women used a 1-2-3 finish to score 31 points and win their second consecutive championship. Princeton was a distant second with 91 points, while Harvard and Brown tied for third with 93.
Hannah Rowe '14 was the team's second finisher in 19th place with a time of 21:08. From there, there was a large gap to the team's third runner, Kate Sullivan '13. Sullivan, Alison Lanois '15, Claudia Pham '15 and Ashley Ulrich '15 finished 47th through 50th, respectively. Only three seconds separated Sullivan in 47th (21:55) from Ulrich in 50th (21:58). Katelyn Walker '14 rounded out the top seven for the Big Green, finishing in 22:01, which was good enough for 53rd overall.
Both the men and women will compete again on Nov. 9 at the NCAA Northeast Regional at Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison, Conn. Depending on how well injured runners recover by then, the Big Green could send several runners to the NCAA Championships in Louisville, Ky., on Nov. 17. If D'Agostino is healthy, she will be a good bet to advance as she won the 2011 Northeast Regional and placed third at the NCAA Championships.
Giordano said that while she was disappointed with the team's finish, she is optimistic that the team can perform better at the regional competition.
"It might not look that good on paper, but you have to take into account what we're facing right now," Giordano said. "We'll be back at full strength for regionals."
If John Bleday '14, the men's second finisher at Paul Short and the reigning indoor Heps champion in the 3,000-meter run, can return for the Northeast Regional, the men will have an outside shot at qualifying as a team for the NCAA Championships. To do so would likely require toppling either Columbia or three-time defending regional champion No. 16 Syracuse University.
"We get a huge confidence boost being able to run [as well as we did at Heps] even without one of our best guys," Geoghegan said. "I think we have a chance to make nationals as a team, which would mean that we have to run really well and make top three, but, given what we did at Heps, I think it's possible."
Gault is a member of The Dartmouth Senior Staff. Sullivan and Ulrich are members of The Dartmouth Staff.
