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Recap | Results
Strong Pack Running Leads Tufts Women’s Cross Country to 20th at NCAA Championship
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| Sophomore Laura Peterson scored third for Tufts |
WINNECONNE, WI - The top five runners on the Jumbo women's cross country team all finished inside the top 160 to place 20th of 32 teams at the NCAA Championship on Saturday.
Washington University (MO) captured the team title, accumulating an impressive 70 points. NESCAC foes Middlebury and Williams placed second and third overall with scores of 111 and 153 points, respectively. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CA) placed fourth with 223 points. New England rival MIT rounded out the top five with a score of 276.
The Jumbos placed 20th with 497 points. Tufts' closest New England rival was Amherst, who placed 11th with 373 points. The Jumbos were able to edge out Hope College by nine points, but were 44 points back of 19th place Ohio Northern
The course at Lake Breeze Golf Club was flat and wide with great footing. The rain held off on race day to allow for extremely fast racing conditions. It was easily the fastest course the Jumbos had raced on all season.
NESCAC and New England Champion Chiara Del Piccolo, a sophomore from Williams, became NCAA Champion as well on Saturday, covering the six-kilometer course in 20:52 to outrun the field of 277 athletes. Senior Christy Cazzola of host Wisconsin-Oshkosh was only five seconds back of Del Piccolo to take the national runner-up position.
The first Jumbo across the line was junior Lilly Fisher (Kansas City, MO) who placed 123rd overall with a time of 22:27. Only two seconds behind in 126th place was sophomore Madeleine Carey (Albuquerque, NM). Sophomore Laura Peterson (Omaha, NE) and senior tri-captain Anya Price (Natick, MA) finished back-to-back in 146th and 147th with times of 22:36.03 and 22:36.12 respectively.
Capping off the scoring for Tufts was sophomore Lauren Creath (Corte Madera, CA), who placed 158th overall with a time of 22:39. Rounding out the championship squad were sophomore Abby Barker (San Carlos, CA) and junior Julia Hajnoczky (Wallingford, PA). Barker clocked a time of 22:46 to place 174th overall, while Hajnoczky placed 243rd in a time of 23:34.
The Jumbos' showing on Saturday outperformed their seed by one place and demonstrated the ability of this year's team to work together and pack-run in big races. Tufts' first finisher and fifth finisher were only separated by 11 seconds. The 11-second spread was the lowest of any team at the meet.
Coach Kristen Morwick's team will return six of their top seven runners in 2012, so look for the Jumbos to once again assert their presence on the national scene.
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