Cross country teams headed to regionals

Five OC runners earn all-NCAC recognition

Shannon Fox became the second woman in North Coast Athletic Conference history to repeat as conference cross country champion at Denison University Saturday as Oberlin's men's and women's teams qualified for the Great Lakes Regional meet.

Fox, a senior, collected her ninth individual conference running title by beating her nearest opponent by nearly 10 seconds in the 5 kilometer race. She paced a Yeowomen team that finished fourth overall.

Besides Fox, who is the conference's runner of the year, Oberlin teams had three other all-conference performers at the meet.

Senior Alex Dawe took second place for the men's team, finishing the 5 mile race in 26:30.53, less than four seconds behind Kenyon's Dan Denning. Two weeks earlier, Dawe edged out Denning to become the top conference finisher in the massive All-Ohio meet at Ohio Wesleyan University Oct. 12.

In the conference meet, Oberlin junior Harsha Thirumurthy finished third, helping Oberlin to a fourth place team finish. For the men's team, senior Kit Wells' 19th place finish made him an all-conference runner. And on the women's team, first-year Rebecca Grossman placed eighth, good enough for all-conference recognition and the award for the conference's top newcomer.

For the conference meet, Grossman was less aggressive in the opening mile than she's been in the past. Instead of being passed by others at race's end, she was doing the passing. "Usually, people catch me," she said. "Psychologically, it makes more sense" to come from behind.

Coach Tom Mulligan said his closely-knit teams accomplished what they needed to in a season marked by injuries and limited depth. "The mark of a good team is that the team performs well when it matters most," Mulligan said.

At the Regional races at Otterbein College Nov. 9, Fox, Dawe and Thirumurthy will all be gunning for berths at the national meet. The top three men's teams and the next highest five finishers qualify for nationals. On the women's side, the top two teams and the next three individuals will go to nationals Nov. 16.

No more than two Oberlin runners have gone to the national meet in any year since the women's team went in 1984. Mulligan said he has high hopes for Fox, Dawe and Thirumurthy and said that Grossman also has an outside chance of qualifying for the big meet. "We both have to have great races," Dawe said.

The teams' goals are top 10 finishes among the 25 teams at Otterbein's flat, fast course. "That's going to be tough to do," Mulligan said.

Fox has won a precious spot in the national meet in each of the last two years. Though Fox finished well ahead of her competition Saturday, the conference been competitive. At the All-Ohio meet, she ran a 18:30.8 race - almost 19 seconds faster than her NCAC time - but still finished just behind Kenyon's Keri Schulte. Schulte finished third in the conference meet, helping her team to a second place finish.

Kenyon and Oberlin were both far behind the College of Wooster, which placed its top five runners in the conference's top 12.

Oberlin's third and fourth runners, sophomore China Weber and first-year Lisa Mickley were 24th and 25th at Denison. Both Weber and Mickley have struggled with injuries throughout the season. Mickley didn't run at the All-Ohio meet.

The Yeowomen's fifth scorer at the conference meet was sophomore Rachel Sims, who finished 43rd with a 21:03 race - less than 30 seconds ahead of sophomore Katy Jones and seniors Manda Gillespie and Maggie Russell-Ciardi, who finished 49th, 51st and 52nd.

Runners in that pack are aiming for personal bests at Regionals, where Gillespie and Russell-Ciardi are running their last collegiate cross country meets.

The Yeowomen took eighth in the All-Ohio meet. In that race, every college in the state competes. It's the biggest field and the only time during the year Oberlin runners face Division I opponents.

Oberlin was third among the seven NCAC teams in the All-Ohio meet. Case Western Reserve University and the Yeowomen flipped places between then and the conference meet, however.

The men's conference race was closer. Only 14 points separated Oberlin from co-champions Earlham College and Wittenberg University. Allegheny College also edged out Oberlin.

All three of Oberlin's competitors after the three all-conference performers are in their first season of college running.

First-year David Cook finished 30th overall with the best meet of his career. Junior Max Rankenburg was eight seconds and five places behind Cook.

And first-year Colin Fishwick came in 65th in a field of 93 runners. Fishwick beat at least one runner from each opposing team.

With only six runners, Oberlin was the smallest team in the conference. Though the team all year has focused on the runners it has, it's likely a strong run from junior Hugh Finn, who didn't run this year, could have given the team the NCAC title.

Last year, Finn finished 20th in the national meet and was an all-American runner.

Replacing Rankenburg's 35 points with what would have likely been a single-digit number would have placed Oberlin well ahead of its opponents.

The men's team outran their rival College of Wooster, which had beaten the Yeomen every time the teams went head to head this year until the championships.

To achieve fourth in the conference meet, Oberlin had to beat Wittenberg, which finished three notches ahead of the eighth-place Yeomen in the All-Ohio meet.

In that race, Dawe was the top conference runner, finishing 6th among Division III competitors and Thirumurthy was 12th.

Dawe has been on a roll recently. In each of his three previous NCAC meets - one running for Wooster and two for Oberlin - he finished 15th. He attributed his improvement recently to a better attitude and training for two marathons he ran in France last spring.

Though Dawe has edged out Thirumurthy in the past few races, Mulligan has hopes for them both. "I think Harsha might be ready to pop one," he said.