On Friday, the Dartmouth men’s and women’s cross country teams traveled to Boston, MA to compete in the 2021 NCAA Northeast Regional Meet at Franklin Park. The five competing members of the men’s roster ran a 10k, while the five women ran a 6k.
The meet was dominated by Syracuse University and Harvard University on both the men’s and women’s sides, but the Big Green had a strong showing themselves. On the men’s side, Jacob Winslow ’23 paced the team, finishing in 30th with a final time of 31:16. The rest of the team finished within the next 41 seconds, helping the team to an 8th place finish out of the 35 teams competing.
“Our goal was to finish in the top five,” Liam Jamieson ’22 said. “We thought this could have been feasible, but a lot of other teams had a good day. It was our entire team’s first time running a 10k, and we are all pretty new and young, and this was also all of our first times running at regionals. Given that, we performed well.”
Given that it is the team’s first season under a new head coach, Jamieson said the squad is proud of their performance. Additionally, as this was one of the final races of the season, it provided the team an opportunity to showcase what they had been working on throughout the season.
“We’ve just been working on running a team race where we keep that spread down, and we work together,” head coach Justin Wood said. “Whoever feels good presses the pace and [the others] know that whoever isn’t feeling great can connect with their teammates and be pulled along. So that has been our focus and is essentially what happened yesterday.”
On the women’s side, Corinne Robitaille ’23 surged ahead for the Big Green, finishing in 28th place with a time of 21:25. Ellie Tymorek ’25 was just seven seconds behind her, finishing 34th. Other Big Green women’s competitors all finished within the top 100, placing the team 11th out of 36 teams competing.
“The conditions were kind of tough,” Emily Levonas ’24 said. “It was really muddy, really rainy — a lot of people during the race were falling. Despite all of that everyone showed out; they put their best effort and left everything out on that course to close out the season pretty strongly. I think everyone is really happy with our performances.”
This season marks the first time that the team has been led by a female head coach — Kendra Foley — and her runners are cognizant of what it means for the program.
“I think she brings a lot to the table by having that perspective as a female runner, just like all of us,” Robitaille said. “We are running for each other, we are running for Dartmouth, but we are also running for our new coach and we want to show all the commitment and time she has put into us by trying to get a result that shows it and making her proud.”
Neither the men’s nor women’s squads qualified to participate in the NCAA National Championships this coming weekend, so their focus now moves to track season — with a little bit of rest in between. A majority of both teams will continue to race into the winter and spring on the indoor and outdoor tracks.
“We are going right into track season now, which is very unique in our sport considering there are no breaks,” Foley said. “I’m really excited to see what they can do on the track. We have a lot of good speed that we don’t really tap into as much in cross country.”
