NYU men, women make Div. III nationals; Saratoga

By Jack Pfeifer

The NYU men’s cross country team has become a team to be reckoned with nationally, and the Violets will make their fourth trip in a row to the NCAA Division III nationals this Saturday morning at Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio. For the first time, they will also be joined by their women’s team.

NYU’s young women’s squad finished third at last Saturday’s Atlantic Regional, in Mt. Morris, N.Y., and they were selected as an at-large entry to the meet. They were ranked 20^th nationally going into last week.

“It is a tremendous accomplishment for these young ladies,” Coach Nick McDonough said. “In building our program, we’ve come a long way these last two years.”

The NYU women (138) finished third at Regionals behind St. Lawrence (43) and Geneseo (74). Their male teammates (79) from Lower Manhattan, surprise national champions two years ago, were also third, trailing fellow New York schools Cortland (49), the reigning national champions, and Geneseo (64), and were also selected at-large. They were ranked seventh nationally last week. The NYU men finished 12^th in the NCAA meet a year ago and were second in 2006.

“The men had a solid race to qualify for the national championships,” McDonough said. “But we still haven’t had all seven of our guys run well at the same time yet. If we can get that, I think we will be very competitive. Our guys know what to expect, and I don’t think they will be overwhelmed.”

The scoring Violets on Saturday were seniors Zach Maher (Carmel), third, and Calvin Lee (North Valley, Old Tappan, N.J.), ninth, followed by juniors Sebastian Schwelm (Berkeley, Calif.), 15^th, and Matt Turlip (Dunellen, N.J.), 21^st, and sophomore Ryan Boyd (Bayport-Blue Point), 31^st.

The scorers for the women’s team were Joan Kanarkiewicz (Duanesburg Central), 10^th; Kirsten Keller (Ft. Morgan, Colo.), 19^th; Maeve Evans (Swanton, Vt.), 27^th; Kerra Vick (Lakewood, Colo.), 35^th, and Paige Zelinsky (Highland Park, Ill.), 47^th. Keller and Vick are freshmen, the others sophomores.

Saratoga Springs

In the Division I championships, to be held on Monday in Terre Haute, Ind., Saratoga Springs H.S. will have the rare distinction of having four of its former runners competing in the national final at the same time, for four different college teams.

All four young women ran for Saratoga at the Footlocker Northeast regional race in November 2004 at Van Cortlandt Park and qualified that day for the national race in California, and all have gone on to success in college: Nicole Blood now runs for Oregon, Hannah Davidson for Providence, Lindsey Ferguson for Notre Dame and Caitlin Lane for Penn State. All four teams qualified for the NCAA meet out of different regional meets over the weekend.

Oregon, 2^nd at the national meet a year ago, finished 2^nd in the West Regional in Marcola, Ore., losing to the defending national champions, Washington, 25-66. Blood finished 5^th in the race, behind her freshman teammate, Jordan Hasay, who was 2^nd, and Washington Huskies who went 1-3-4.

“It was tough,” Blood said, “and we knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Now we are focusing on Nationals. We put out a competitive effort today, but now we need to relax.”

The Oregon coach, Vin Lananna, whose men’s team are reigning national champions, was circumspect about the women’s prospects on Monday.

“We had all our runners in the top 26, and that was a goal,” he said. “But we’ll have to wait until the Nationals to see how good we really are. We will have to demonstrate all of our skills. We should have been better today, but the really big and important race is next week.”

Stanford was a solid 3^rd in the women’s race and was advanced as an at-large team, on the strength of solid runs by two little-known freshmen, Stephanie Marcy and Alex Dunne. The four New Yorkers who went west to Stanford two seasons ago – Sarah McCurdy (Bay Shore), Emma Miller-Bedell (Tappan Zee), Tori Pennings (Warwick Valley) and Kristen Reese (Carmel) – did not make the lineup.

The biggest challenge to the Washington women’s attempt to repeat is expected to come from Villanova, which dominated the Mid-Atlantic Regional in Princess Anne, Md., with just 23 points. The Wildcats, who defeated Oregon on its home course a month ago at the Bill Dellinger Invitational, were led by the 1-2-5 finish of Sheila Reid, Amanda Marino and Bogdana Mimic. Also qualifying from that Region for women were the teams from Princeton, West Virginia, Penn State and Georgetown.

Princeton, which swept the Heps last month with a perfect 15, was led by Liz Costello, in 7^th. Emily Infeld finished 3^rd for Georgetown, Bridget Franek 4^th for Penn State. Lane was 29^th for the Nittany Lions.

Iona qualifies in Div. I men

In the Div. I men’s competition, Iona finished second to Syracuse in the Northeast Regional in Boston, 55-59, and qualified for the nationals for the 8^th year in a row. The Gaels have finished 2^nd at the NCAA the last two seasons.

Iona’s Ryan Sheridan (Walt Whitman) won the race for Iona, and was followed by Alexander Soderberg of Sweden (6^th), Jason Weller of Boyertown, Pa. (11^th), Thorstein Baumeister of Germany (20^th) and Matt Bayley of Australia (21^st).

The team to beat in this year’s men’s race is Stanford, which has been the nation’s No. 1-ranked team most of the year. The Cardinal dominated the defending-champion Oregon Ducks at Regionals, going 1-2-3 and scoring just 27. Oregon, actually, was third, finishing behind the University of Portland, 84-109, but securing an at-large bid. “I believe we are a trophy team,” Lananna said, “but we didn’t run like one today.”

Matthew Centrowitz, a member of last year’s NCAA championship team, was only the Ducks’ No. 7 finisher on Saturday, finishing 73^rd.

The West Regional race was won by Stanford’s Chris Derrick, who is expected to challenge Liberty’s Samuel Chelanga, runnerup to Galen Rupp of Oregon in last year’s final. Chelanga won the Southeast Regional by 33 seconds.

Syracuse won both the men’s and women’s Northeast races. Their men were led by Patrick Dupont (Fairport), (5^th), Jeff Scull (8^th), and Griff Graves (12^th). The Syracuse women beat Providence 59-70, and those were the only two teams to advance to Nationals from that region, as Stony Brook (140), Iona (144) and Columbia (210) all failed to advance.

Syracuse went 1-4 with Katie Hursey (Hampstead, Md.) and Catherine DeSarle (Carmel), while Providence was 2-5 with freshman Shelby Greany (Suffern) and Saratoga’s Davidson. Among those advancing as individuals were Anna Holm-Jorgensen, a graduate student at Iona from Denmark, who was third, and New Yorker Jillian King (Scotia-Glenville), seventh for Boston College.

Providence also qualified its men’s team, scoring 78 points, ahead of non-qualifying Columbia (125).

Duke, Virginia advance both squads

Duke and Virginia advanced both their men’s and women’s squads out of Southeast.

In the women’s race, Duke won 69-113, as they were the only two teams to make it to Nationals. Duke was paced by Carly Seymour (Central Cambria, Pa.), 5^th; Kate Van Buskirk (Brampton, Ont.), 6^th; freshman Juliet Bottorff (Tatnall, Wilmington, Del.), 10^th; freshman Madeline Morgan (Mountain Brook, Ala.), 27^th, and Suejin Ahn (Ward Melville, L.I.), 28^th.

Five men’s teams qualified for the NCAA from Southeast – William & Mary (49), N.C. State (99), Louisville (121), Duke (131) and Virginia (133). It’s believed that Virginia may have received the final at-large berth, over Cal Poly. CP tied for fifth in the West Regional with 155 points with Arizona State but was placed sixth on the tie-breaker. ASU received a bid to nationals; Cal Poly did not.

In the Great Lakes Regional, the Wisconsin men, perennial threats for the national title, won their race, over Michigan State, while the women’s race was won by Notre Dame in a narrow finish over Ohio State, Michigan and Indiana, all of whom qualified for Nationals. Saratoga’s Ferguson finished third for the Irish.

The other threat to Stanford in the men’s championship race is expected to come from Oklahoma State, No. 2-ranked nationally and winners of the Midwest Region. The Cowboys ran together and finished 9-10-11-12-13-14-16. “We wanted to run well enough as a team to win, but conservatively enough to save ourselves for the NCAA championships,” said Dave Smith, the OSU coach. The Cowboys are led by NCAA 1,500 champ German Fernandez, sophomore Colby Lowe and 6^th-year senior Ryan Vail. Vail was granted an extra season of competition by the NCAA because of injury and other extenuating circumstances.

Cortland, Kosgei return in Div. III

In Div. III, Cortland won the Atlantic Regional and will defend the men’s championship against such challengers as North Central (Ill.) and Wisconson/La Crosse, ranked 1-2 nationally.

Cortland finished 6-7-8-11-17 with an all-NY lineup of Eric Stermer of Chenango Forks, Jerry Greenlaw of Warwick Valley, Kyle O’Brien of Monroe-Woodbury, Sean Curry of Syracuse and Justin Wager of Guilderland. Geneseo, which has been ranked ahead of Cortland at times during the season, was second and was led by sophomore Lee Berube of Ticonderoga, who was fourth.

Also qualifying for Nationals from that region for men, in addition to Cortland, Geneseo and NYU, were New York schools Rochester Institute of Technology and St. Lawrence.

The individual winner at Mt. Morris was Peter Kosgei of Hamilton College, the defending individual national champion.

St. Lawrence won the women’s race, 43-74 over Geneseo, with NYU (138), Ithaca (163) and Rensselaer (181) all also advancing. St. Lawrence finished 1-3-5 with Wendy Pavlus of Tupper Lake, Johannah Ludington of Morrisville, Vt., and Jenna Hulton of East Aurora.

At the New England Div. III Regional, the MIT and Middlebury women tied for 1^st, ahead of qualifiers Williams, Amherst and Wesleyan. Middlebury is reigning national champion, but Calvin (Mich.) is currently ranked No. 1. Williams won the men’s race there, ahead of Amherst, Keene State and Brandeis.

Special thanks to Walt Murphy and X-Country X-Press for results, and to Larry Byrne, of Rhode Island, for the historical reference to the girls of Saratoga.