Cross-Country Races in Ivy Championships

While a first place finish appears unlikely for the Columbia cross-country team at today’s Ivy League Heptagonal Cross-Country Championships, the Lions will duke it out all the way through Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. With competition tougher than ever, the Light Blue will rely on team depth and its pack-running mentality to carry it through.

The women’s pack has tightened as the season progressed, with only a 1:13 minute spread between the top five runners at NCAA Pre-Nationals. Senior co-captain Carmen Ballard, running in the last Ivy League meet of her collegiate career, is expected to improve on last year’s fourth-place finish and fight to the end with Yale junior Lindsay Donaldson, the 2006 Heps individual winner. Donaldson has consistently served as the Elis’ number-one runner this season, but Ballard’s Pre-Nationals 6K time is four seconds faster than Donaldson’s, leaving room for an upset at today’s race. The rest of the Columbia pack includes freshman Jackie Drouin, seniors Stephanie Lenihan and Shelby Leland, and junior Megan Lessard.

On the men’s side, the Lions are counting on sophomore James Bogner, freshmen Thomas Poland and Dustin Martin, seniors Dan Whitt and Liam Boylan-Pett, and juniors Paul Morris, Mason McElroy, and Jeff Randall. Morris, who took eighth at last year’s Heps and earned second-team All-Ivy League honors, and Bogner, who placed 29th, have been the team’s highest-placing runners so far. The Light Blue has had quite a few successes this season, winning the Spiked Shoe Invitational at Penn State and the Binghamton Invitational earlier this fall.

The Princeton Tigers are expected to sweep both the men’s and women’s races, with the women ranked fourth in the latest national ranking. The men’s team, although not quite as strong on the national level, was the only Ivy League squad to get a vote in the most recent poll. The squad also has nearly two-thirds of its top runners from last year returning this season. The women were able to sweep last year’s Heps with a 22-point lead, leaving Columbia and Cornell fighting for the second-place spot. The men took a smaller lead over the Lions, who decisively trumped the Big Green by 34 points.

The Big Red is expected to seriously challenge both Lions’ teams. Despite the loss of three star runners this season, the Cornell women have bounced back behind the efforts of their talented underclassmen. The men, spearheaded by senior co-captains Jimmy Wyner and Sage Canaday, have performed well all season and beat the Lions at NCAA Pre-Nationals.

The remaining Ivy League top finishers include Penn senior Stacy Kim and Dartmouth senior Susan Dunklee on the women’s side and Brown sophomore Christian Escareno on the men’s. These runners are expected to have a large effect on the race, perhaps making the difference between a Light Blue finish near the top.