Schmeckpeper Follows Plan to Victory
MIT Places 5th in NCAA New England Division III Region
November 15, 2003
Seeded fifth going into the NCAA Division III Regional Qualifier, MIT's cross country team could not surpass their seed, missing a national qualifying spot by 3 points behind Amherst College. The varsity runners will probably be doing the "should of, could of, would of" for the next twelve months. Ben Schmeckpeper followed his plan to perfection, pulling away to a 10 second victory to become the first individual from MIT to win this prestigious race since Paul Neves in 1981.
MIT's secret to success this year has been their trail group of Brian Anderson, Kevin Brulois, John Brewer and Eric Khatchadourian sticking and working together to run down teams. This team work has been successful to bring the group to within 1:00 of Schmeckpeper, which is what was thought to be necessary to qualify for the NCAA Championship. Today, that teamwork never happened, at least not with those mentioned above. Anderson got out well, perhaps a few seconds too fast at the mile mark, but necessary to keep from having to catch too many people during the race. Brewer sort of went with him, but was concerned the pace was too fast. This distraction was enough to take away from the focus needed to fight the pain later in the race. Brulois and Khatchadourian went out at their own pace, moved up the entire race, but never got up to where they needed to be. Most of this difficulty was due to the talented runners from the top teams of Tufts, Keene State and Williams College. The fast early pace pushed nearly everyone, and those who decided to run conservatively at the start were forced to pass too many people on a wet, soft and sometimes frozen course in wind chill conditions in the 20s.
In spite of all this, "these guys ran great" said Coach Halston Taylor. Coach Taylor added, "it is easy to look back and find where you could have made up three points, but running a gutsy, determined race is what got them so close in the first place. Maybe if the second group stayed and worked together we would have run faster, but maybe not. Anderson and Chris Fidkowski ran outstanding races." Fidkowski improved by over :30 as he finished 5th on the team in his first year of collegiate cross country.
Anderson moved up to 23rd position after the 3rd mile and appeared ready to contend for one of the potential nine individual spots to Nationals. However, he began to slide a little and ended up 28th, easily his best race of his cross country career. Brulois moved up throughout the race to finish in 38th, the fifth freshman in the entire race. Brewer slipped back to 39th place from his best position of 34th after the 3rd mile. Fidkowski followed closely in 42nd after working with Brulois much of the race. Khatchadourian, perhaps waited a little too long to move up, but nevertheless ran pretty well and finished 53rd.
Schmeckpeper's plan was to take his time over the first two miles, moving up gradually to within striking distance of the leaders. At mile two he was in 5th place and at mile three he was in 4th position. His plan was to take the lead at about three and half miles and he was aided by the fact that the lead vehicle went the wrong way, taking the top two runners, enabling Schmeckpeper to take the lead sooner than expected. "I saw the top two go with the lead vehicle but I knew the course and went the right way", said Schmeckpeper. He extended his lead and then held on in the final 800 to win by 10 seconds. "It was definitely Ben's top race this season and proved his race at the All New England's was for real", said Coach Taylor.
The team is not going to Hanover College next week, but Schmeckpeper is, and he is going to try and improve on his 32nd All American position at last year's Nationals.