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Fox qualifies for Nationals again

Men's team beats all NCAC competition, women place 9th

by Geoff Mulvihill

Senior Shannon Fox qualified for her third consecutive NCAA Division III national cross country meet Saturday as she led the Yeowomen to a ninth place finish in the Great Lakes Regional meet at Otterbein College.

The Oberlin men's team took 10th place in its race and finished ahead of the three other NCAC teams who were at the meet. Three of those teams had beaten the Yeomen two weeks earlier at the NCAC championships.

The Yeomen were led by their three all-conference performers. Junior Harsha Thirumurthy finished 24th, senior Alex Dawe finished 41st and senior Kit Wells finished 49 in the field of 180 runners.

Though none of the Oberlin men came close to qualifying for this weekend's national meet, the fifth scorer for the team finished 105th and earned the team 97 points.

The Yeomen had just six runners all year - and all of them were healthy for most of the season. At the season's final meet Saturday, junior Max Rankenburg finished 91st, first-year David Cook finished 105th and first-year Colin Fishwick was 146th

Among the Oberlin runners, only Dawe, the second place finisher at the conference meet had a bad day. The running was coordinated so the team could slide past conference teams from Wittenberg University, Kenyon College and Earlham College, who took the 11th, 12th and 13th positions as a team.

"This is really a big surprise. It's kind of too bad it didn't happen at conference," said Wells, who had a personal best time of 27:08.2 in the 5-mile race Saturday. The race was the last of his Oberlin career.

The men's course was fast, with the last two miles all flat or downhill and the day was chilly.

Wells said each runner was handed a silver foil wrap to keep warm as they finished. "Everybody looked like big pillows," he said.

In the women's race, Fox finished in 19:35.2, fourth overall, which gave her the last national berth for a runner in the Great Lakes region.

Only two teams and three additional individuals qualified for nationals at the event. Only one runner from one of the top two teams placed among the top 10 finishers, which made it exceptionally difficult to qualify for the meet.

Kenyon's Keri Schulte finished second. She had finished third at the NCAC championships, which Fox won. The fifth-place runner was Kenyon's Gretchen Baker, who finished second at the NCAC meet.

First-year Rebecca Grossman finished 19th.

The rest of Oberlin's team completed the race within 61 seconds of one another.

Sophomore China Weber led the way at 21:02.6, 66th in the meet. First-year Lisa Mickley, sophomore Rachel Sims, senior Manda Gillespie and sophomore Katy Jones placed 73rd, 81st, 111th and 117th respectively.

Mickley said the team spirit in the individual race helped her. "Without the team, I would've been really nervous," she said.

Members of the team wrote inspirational slogans on their hands in permanent markers before the meet.

Among them: "Make 'em bleed," "Dig deep," and "This is for me," which was Sims' way of reminding herself of what the race was about.

With no hope of qualifying for nationals as a team, the runners go for their personal bests at the regional meet.

Saturday, Fox is running at the national meet at Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill. Last year, Fox finished 65th in the nation.

Oberlin

Copyright © 1996, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 125, Number 9; November 15, 1996

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