Women Win Metropolitans for Tenth Straight Year

The last decade has seen a new president in the White House, a two-dollar increase in the cost of a gallon of gas, and three different head coaches for Columbia football. What hasn’t changed in those 10 years, however, has been the women’s cross country team’s dominance at the Metropolitan Championships.

For the tenth straight time, Columbia’s women came out on top at the Metropolitans, as the Lions finished with 46 points in a field of 12 schools. Iona came in second with 54 points, while Fordham was a distant third with 117 points. Columbia was the lone Ivy League school competing in the event, which took place at the Lions’ default home course in Van Cortlandt Park.

Junior Kari Higdem was the top finisher for the Light Blue, coming in fifth overall with a time of 19:13 in the 3,000-meter race. Freshman Alexandra Crawley turned in her best performance of the season as Columbia’s second-place runner, crossing the line in 19:23, right behind Higdem. Crawley beat senior Anne Kennedy by one second for sixth place. Iona’s McKayla Plank was the top runner in the field, taking first place with an impressive time of 18:16, 23 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Cheyenne Ogletree of Rutgers.

The men also turned in a solid performance, but could not defend their 2006 Metropolitan title, as NYU took first place with a score of 27. The Violets took the top three spots in the 8,000-meter race, with Hany Abdallah earning first-place honors with a time of 26:01, just one second ahead of teammate Ryan Williams. Columbia’s top runner was junior Ross Turner, who finished seventh with a time of 26:46, four seconds off of sixth place. Turner just beat out freshman Anthony Merra for seventh, as Merra finished a tenth of a second behind Turner. As a team, the Lions finished with a score of 62, 45 points ahead of third-place Southern Connecticut State.

For the Lions, the Metropolitan Championships gave head coach Willy Wood a chance to see some of his second-string runners in action, as both the men’s and women’s sides rested their top runners in advance of Pre-Nationals on October 13 and the Ivy League Championships on October 26.