Both cross country teams finish second, senior hospitalized for hypothermia

The Columbia men’s and women’s cross country teams started the race in the rain, kept running as it turned into sleet, and finished the race in snow. Both teams posted solid second-place finishes and narrowly missed winning the Ivy League Championship at the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships on Oct. 29 at Princeton.

Even as the snow fell with sub-32-degree windchill, senior Kyle Merber led the men’s team with a time of 24:47.7 and led most of the 8000 meter race; however, Dartmouth’s Ethan Shaw sprinted past him in the final meters of the race to edge Merber out by one-tenth of a second with a time of 24:47.6.

“Ethan and I were running neck to neck, and I only had maybe a second on him,” Merber said. “It is a little disappointing to be in the lead with 100 meters left, and not win it, but I felt him nudge ahead of me just in front of the finish line.”

Due to the frigid temperatures combined with the rain, snow, and sleet, Merber caught hypothermia and had to be hospitalized immediately after he crossed the finish line.

Even with his hospitalization, Merber finished second overall and was awarded All-Ivy first-team honors. Overall, Columbia’s top-five runners finished in the top 18 amongst the 92 Ivy League runners. Junior Mike Murphy and sophomore Nico Composto finished eighth and ninth overall with 25:12.5 and 25:13.8 respectively. Both Composto and Murphy earned All-Ivy second-team honors, along with junior Ben Veilleux who nabbed the final second-team award with his 14th-place finish of 25:25.8.

The rest of the Light Blue finished strong with senior Justin Heck (18th), sophomore Jake Sienko (19th), and junior Paul Synder (20th), finishing within 2.2 seconds of each other. Freshman Daniel Everett (24th), sophomore Byron Jones (34th), senior Gary Brownell (36th), and juniors Pat DeSabato (42nd) and Leighton Spencer (47th) all finished strongly, trailing the lead time by no more than a minute.

The men’s team accumulated a total of 51 points, 14 points behind the Ivy League champion, the Princeton Tigers. The Lions improved on their 2010 Heps result, when they finished third overall but were unable to repeat their success from 2009 when they won the Ivy League championships.

“We are a little disappointed with the second-place finish, but we had a lot of guys with great races, even though it was far from the conditions that we wanted,” Merber said.

The women’s team, who also finished with a total of 51 points, lost to the Ivy League champion, the Cornell Big Red, by only two points. The women matched their performance in 2010, when they also finished second behind Princeton. However, this year, they beat Princeton—who had been the Ivy champions for five consecutive years coming into Saturday—by 43 points. Despite their second-place finish, the Lions ended with the best average time in the Ivy League at 22:26.9. Columbia freshman Waverly Neer led the Light Blue, finishing second narrowly behind Dartmouth’s Abbey D’Agostino. Neer kept lock-step for first before D’Agostino bolted towards the end to finish 21:58.2. Neer finished the 6k race with a time of 22:02.7 and won All-Ivy first-team honors along with junior Caroline McDonough who finished sixth overall with a time of 22:15.5.

Junior Clare Buck earned All-Ivy second-team honors for placing ninth overall, and junior Emily Lanois missed All-Ivy recognition by three seconds, finishing 16th overall with a time of 22:41.8.

Juniors Noelle Van Rysselberghe (18th) and Mallory Anderson (30th), sophomores Caroline Williams (38th) and Chelsea Carrick (67th), and freshmen Anne Carey (34th), Madeline Rathbun (48th), Kaylin Mahoney (62nd), and Aryn Foland (76th) rounded out the Lions’ finishers at the Heps.

Next for the cross country teams are the NCAA Northeast Regional Championships on Nov. 12 in Buffalo. Columbia looks to build off their performance at the Heptagonal to finish first or second at the Regional Championship in order to qualify for the NCAA National Championships.

“Every year we talked about making nationals—that’s always been the goal,” Merber said. “We just need to keep running the way we have been running. Having guys step up at each meet has worked well so far. The team has never made Nationals, and everything has been geared towards getting there. The pinnacle would be leading the team to a high-place finish at nationals, getting them there and performing well once there.”