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A Tale of Two Teams at Pre-Nats
October 2, 2021
MIT made the trip to Louisville, KY this weekend to face off against some of the best Division III competition in the country and to preview the course being used for the NCAA Division III Championship in seven weeks at the Live in Louisville Classic / Pre-National Meet. There were eight nationally ranked teams in the 42 team field for the men's silver race and five nationally ranked teams among the 37 team field in the women's silver race.
When the men lined up at noon, the temperature was 80 degrees and the humidity 71%. Going into the meet, based on the national rankings, MIT was favored as the fifth ranked team, but with only one meet under their belts, and that one on a very hilly course, it was difficult to assume the rankings were that accurate. The other ranked teams represented at the meet were North Central College at 6th, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) at 7th, Johns Hopkins at 11th, UW LaCrosse at 14th, Emory at 16th, Calvin at 19th and Lynchburg at 23rd.
The start was pretty hectic with most of the teams pushing hard to the left, positioning themselves for the first turn, which left the right side wide open and easy to navigate. The start is slightly downhill, which with the combination of the sweeping left turn at around 600 meters, generally causes teams to go out too fast, which happened today as well. The leaders came through the mile at 4:38, which was 10 seconds ahead of the MIT large group at 4:48. The entire group of eight runners for the Engineers were between 50th and 60th place.
By the two mile mark, MIT had moved up by ~30 places, were still in a tight one second group, but were still eight seconds behind the lead group of 10 or so runners. At the 2K mark MIT had been in fifth place, but by the two mile they were in second place and moving up.
When MIT got to the four mile mark they were in sixth with Andrew Mah '23, 10th with Matthew Kearney '22, 11th with Sam Acquaviva '23, 14th with Finn Jacobson-Schulte 'G, and 16th with Vedang Lad '23 for a 57 point total if the race were to have ended there, but Tech was still moving up.
In the final mile, Mah moved up to fifth (24:30), Kearney to eighth (24:38), Acquaviva to ninth (24:40), Lad to 11th (24:41) and Jacobson-Schulte to 13th (24:50), for a total of 46 points, a comfortable win over second place CMS with 135 points. MIT's delta of :20 seconds was impressive, yet they had Lowell Hensgen '23 (24:58), Ryan Wilson '22 (25:01), and Sanjay Raman '23 (25:22) fairly close behind, plus a small handful of teammates back on campus who are of equal ability. According to Coach Halston Taylor, there is still work to do, particularly on the mental side when things do not go as planned.
As great as the men's race was in MIT's favor, the women's race was anything but in MIT's favor. If it could go wrong, it would, was more the theme.
To start the day, number three runner Sarah Bentley '24 was ill and not able to race. That was okay because Anna Chau '23, who had been out the past week with a suspected food poisoning thought she was ready to race.
By the time the women lined up, the temperature had risen a couple degrees to 82, and the clouds had dissipated a bit to allow more sun to beat down on the runners. With a large field and talented group of runners, the initial pace was bound to be fast. CMS was ranked fourth nationally, MIT was ranked seventh, UW LaCrosse 14th, Calvin 16th and Emory 21st going into the race. CMS led a very fast first mile in 5:30. In with that group was Izzy Gengaro '22, who should have known better than to go out that fast.
Twelve seconds back were Gillian Roeder '24 and Olivia Rosenstein '24, which at 5:43 was also too fast. They were in 10th and 17th place respectively at that point. Right behind them were the rest of MIT's team; Anna Chau, Anna Haddad '23, Einat Gavish '22 and Olivia Stoner '25, all sub 5:50 and all too fast.
By the two mile mark, Gengaro had been ready to make a move while with the lead group and in first place, but her shoe was hanging loose and she did not know whether to kick it off or stop to put it on. She stopped to put it on, lost a lot of ground and let it get to her mentally. Rosenstein and Roeder had moved up to a tie for ninth and looked great. Chau was feeling the effects from the toll taken on her body by the illness, while Haddad, Gavish and Stoner were feeling the effects of the fast pace, and struggling to hold onto the pace.
Rosenstein continued to move up, finishing in fifth in 22:10 for a remarkable race, but Roeder started to fall off when they made the move shortly after two miles after catching Gengaro. Gengaro and Roeder fell off badly by the three mile mark, losing 30 seconds to Rosenstein. Gengaro finished in 26th in 22:59, but Roeder did not finish due to heat exhaustion. Chau held onto 42nd place in 23:30, and was followed by Gavish in 49th (23:36) and Haddad in 61st (23:48). Without their number three and four runners finishing the race, their number one temporarily losing her shoe and number five dealing with weakness from food poisoning, combined with going out too fast, it was no surprise the team finished in fifth with 172 points, well behind CMS with 43 points, UW LaCrosse with 70, Calvin with 153 and Emory with 170. The women's team know they have the ability, but also know they have to start putting it together. Similar to the men's team, but perhaps more so, Coach Taylor believes his squad needs to prepare better to be mentally tough when things go south and you just have to step up.
The next race for the Engineers will be the Conn. College Invitational on October 16 where they will have a rematch with Williams College as well as many other nationally ranked teams. |
