Women's Individual Results

Race recap

Runners of the Meet - Adron Pitmon and Sophie Galleher

Trinity played host to the annual NESCAC Championships, with the race held on Sunday at the challenging Wickham Park in Manchester. The race was held on Sunday due to the Connecticut State Championship races that were held all day on Saturday (making the tough course a little bit tougher!). This was the first time this year that the teams were limited in squad size, with only the Top 12 runners competing in the race. The women got things started off, and certainly set the tone for the day. Sophie Galleher got out strong with the leaders, and shortly after the gun, she and about 5 others formed the lead pack that started to pull away from the rest of the field. Hallie Schwab, Ali Simeone and Melissa Sullivan were in the middle of the 2nd pack, with another strong pack of Amherst purple following behind in the 3rd big pack of runners. Shortly after the mile, the front pack, broke into a pack of four including Sophie while behind them the race started to strong out, with Amherst doing a great job of finding teammates to run with. Shortly after 2 mile, Sophie and a Tufts and Wesleyan runner had broken away as a three women lead pack and the race would be won by one of these three while at the same time, Mercedes Taylor had put in a huge mid race surge to catch up with Hallie, Ali and Sully, while Christina Wong and Sarah Daly were doing their best to close that gap. As the leaders came out of the woods and onto the field for the final 1k, the Tufts runner had started to open up a small margin on Sophie but as they crossed the road and headed up the uphill 200m finish, Sophie put her head down and charged into the lead and crossed the line first - the 3rd year in a row that an Amherst runner has won NESCAC's! Hallie was the next to cross, as she finished 15th and within 5 places and 13 seconds, the team had closed out the scoring as Ali would finish 17th, Sully 18th and Mercedes in 20th. Only 11 spots back came Christina while first year Sarah Daly rounded out the Top 7 with her 47th place finish. Similar to the 2-5 runners tight packing, the next group of runners came charging through the line within a few seconds of each other as keri Lambert finished 51st, one spot ahead of Shannon Mckenna while 7 seconds later came Kristen Moulton and Lauren Almeida with classmate Elodie Reed finishing the day in 70th. The women raced to a very impressive 3rd place finish - a big improvement from last year's NESCAC race, and continue to get better as the season progresses.

The men would traverse the same course that the women did, and then continue to add another loop out through the fields and back through the trail to the finish, and the course was made a little muddier from the women, but it was a good test of strength. Running without two scoring runners posed both a challenge and an opportunity for the team to step up. Daniel Murner got out well and went with the leaders, and shortly after the mile, the Hamilton and Williams runners started to pull away and he went with them as they opened up a big gap on the rest of the field. Will Yochum was near the front of the chase pack, while John McGrail and Steve Corsello were back around 30th with Jimmy Swanson and Kit Callahan around 50th. As the runners came out onto the field to go past the finish (a little shy of 4 miles) Murner was all alone in 3rd, while Yochum was in 5th as he ran with Middlebury and Tufts guy, and then a ways back McGrail and Corsello were trying to work through the mud and slowly moving up. Jimmy Swanson continued in 5th for the team with Andrew Erskine and Kit running 6 & 7, and behind them Adron Pitmon was having a very good race as he seemed to be moving up the best of everyone. Coming out of the woods for the final time, Yochum and Murner were running together, along with the Williams 2nd runner, but were not able to answer his move and then in the final uphill stretch, were passed by the Tufts runner as they finished 5th and 6th - both earning All Conference First Team Honors. John McGrail caught a Tufts runner up the hill to finish 17th, while Corsello also got a Tufts runner as he finished 20th, and Jimmy would close out the scoring in 42nd, with Kit and Andrew coming in a few seconds after him. Adron came through in 28:23, while Travis Cohoon, Alec jacobson and Geoff Ainslie worked together for most of the 2nd half of the race, and finished 72, 73 and 74, with Will Bell closing out the day with his 84th place finish. Despite Tufts putting in 6 guys in front of our 5th, the team was able to hang on to a 2nd place finish by a mere 2 points to help tie for their best ever NESCAC finish (finished 2nd in 2007).