Women's XC runs for top-10 finish at Nationals

Last Saturday at 10:29 a.m., 230 cross country runners did their last wind sprints, trying to shake out their legs' final kinks and their stomachs' final flutters on a cold, blustery, drizzly November morning. At 10:29:59, 230 runners lined up across a half-muddy field in teams of seven and tensed themselves for the cap gun's bang. At 10:30, seven Yale women burst out of their box in a pack. And at 11:21:20.1, when Katherine LaFrance, TC '01, Yale's fifth-place finisher and final scoring runner, hit the finish line ahead of every other team's number five, it became certain that Yale women's cross country is going to Nationals for the first time since 1990. But the team knew even before that.

VICTORIA LYALL/YH Colorado, Brigham Young, and Stanford will supply Yale's fiercest competition at Nationals.

Kate O'Neill, TD '03, and her twin sister Laura, TC '03, the team's one-two punch and the race's five-six finishers, knew in the chute right after they finished, when they could turn around and see the rest of their team lining up close behind them. Lindsay Mitchell, CC '03, who finished fourth on the team and 12th overall, could see just enough of the field ahead of her to know that only number six Boston College (BC) had them beat. Then LaFrance finished, and soon after it became official: Yale was one of the Northeast region's two automatic qualifiers. "We're going to Iowa!," Head Coach Mark Young, ES '68, barked from the flatbed truck on which the results were posted.

On Mon., Nov. 20, NCAA Division I Championships will be held at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. The team flies out on Friday afternoon, runs the course Saturday, jogs it Sunday, and races against 30 teams and 20 individual qualifiers at 11 a.m. on Monday. In the meantime, they taper, cutting down their workouts to make sure their legs are fresh. "Our coach said, `The hay is already in the barn,'" Kate said. "We don't need to add any more hay, I guess."

Yale's strength and freshness showed at Regionals, where the team ran its best race of the year on a six-kilometer course, six-tenths of a mile longer than the usual 5-K. As usual, Yale went out as a pack, strong but steady. The O'Neills and Katie Rigney, JE '01—Yale's number three and number ten overall—pulled farther ahead after the first mile as the team left the wide-open Flats and began the first of three circuits of Van Cortlandt Park's wooded Freshman Hill and Cow Path. "We passed a lot of people and did it toward the end," Laura said. "It really looked like they were hurting."

BC, on the other hand, went out fast and almost paid the painful price. Indeed, both O'Neills bore down on, and passed, BC's Rachel Hixson in the race's final 300 meters. Saturday, Yale's strategy wasn't near-ly enough—BC had nine points and about five seconds per runner on them, but at Nationals—another 6-K course, but one with far more hills than Van Cortlandt—teams that go too hard too early may be easy pickings. In a huge race during which most of the runners will be unknown quantities, beating BC is one of the Bulldogs' few obvious goals.

And then there are the big names: Brigham Young, number one in the nation for most of the year, current number one Colorado, and number two Stanford, home to three high school national cross country champions (one a repeat) and one runner-up. Is there an intimidation factor for lowly, non-scholarship, number nine Yale? "Our team is in there," LaFrance said. "We're one of those teams. I don't feel intimidated. It would make more sense if I did." Young is as certain of his team's mettle. "Some teams might choke," he said. "This team won't."

Mitchell, for one, doesn't plan on it. "We're trying to impress some people while we're there, knock off some big schools," she said. It'll be tough though, especially because the field is both huge and talented; Yale has to keep up the pack attack that's worked for it all year and not let itself be dispersed by the chaos or discouraged by the fact that they're running 40th instead of fourth. "Five or10 seconds can be 30 or 40 people," Young said. "They pack 'em in at that point."

Even an average finish of 50th place might be good enough for a top-10 finish to complement Yale's top-10 ranking. And to the Bulldogs, top 10 is the team's stated goal—a bigger upset would be gravy on what's already a shocking season. Captain Nancy Wolcott, BR '01, who's flying out as the team's alternate (along with the team's number six Amanda Brewster, BR '03, and number seven Rebecca Hunter, JE '04) said, "As freshman, if you had told Katie, Katherine, and myself that we would be going to Nationals, I don't think we would have believed you." This summer, no one except the Yale women would have believed you if you had told them the exact same thing.

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