The Norwich men’s cross country team finished third and the women’s team placed seventh at the GNAC Championship Meet held at St. Joseph’s in Maine last weekend.
Both teams had a strong season, according to the cross country head coach.
Most of the cross country team’s schedule is against teams that are not in its conference.
“Of all the meets we’ve had, we have run against our conference schools only once,” said head coach Ramsey Paulwan.
During the first and only inter-conference meet on Sept. 24 at Rivier College, the men were able to take first out of the five other competing teams with 31 points.
In the same meet the women runners placed second with a strong running from sophomore Mallory Clark, who finished second overall with a time of 22:01.
The Cadets were able to push through one of the harder courses in Norwich’s schedule.
“Middlebury or Rivier, both are hilly courses. Rivier would have to be harder because a great deal of it is done on pavement and paved roads,” said Co-captain Michael Christopher, 22, a mechanical engineer, from Hazlet, N.J.
The other meets that Norwich has competed in are used by the athletes and coaches to judge how the team needs to train.
“The other races are a way to determine where our fitness level is at and what we need to work on,” said Jackie McElligott, 20, an English major, from Pinehurst, N.C.
The other races are made up of different teams from across the country.
“There were 20 or so teams with over 200 runners from all over the country,” McElligott said, “This last race we had a team from North Carolina.”
The cross country program’s numbers have grown this season. This year the majority of the team is made up of freshmen.
“Sixty-three percent of our team is freshmen and a good chunk of them are pretty fast, it probably helped that we did all our recruiting last year and in the winter,” said Co-captain Thomas Malinowski, a 21-year-old mathematics major from Jericho, Vt.
“Getting them into running is interesting, some of them have run cross country before and some have not. I have seen a lot of strides in their improvements,” Malinowski said.
Although the freshmen runners are vital to the team they still are affected by injuries as they adapt to the harder training regimen.
“A lot of our team is freshmen and they aren’t as used to training as hard as a colligate team, so we get a lot of muscle strains and injuries from this type of running. So that has put a damper on our team so far,” McElligott said.
At the end of the cross country team’s season it competed in the GNAC championship meet at St. Joseph’s in Maine. This course is very easy and flat, according to Christopher, but tough competition comes from Johnson & Wales University.
Johnson & Wales has only been a true competitor recently. “They weren’t even on the map a couple years ago, they were able to secure a couple of top runners who were able to place exceptionally well,” Coach Pualwan said.
Johnson & Wales placed first in both competitions.
Both the men’s and women’s runners have had excellent races on the backs of both freshmen and strong returning runners.
Mallory Clark and Joe Rosenthal have beaten their personal records multiple times this season, as returning sophomores.
At the GNACs, Joe Rosenthal and Michael Christopher both finished with a time of 28:40 to finish eighth and ninth respectively and earned all-conference honors on the 8K course.
For the women, Mallory Clark earned all-conference honors. She ran the 5K course in 21.14, coming in fourth.
The team went into GNAC’s confident that they could win. “Both the men and women are right there to place first or second if we run a smart and fast race,” Pualwan said.
The runners were motivated by victories that they had in the past years. “Our team is doing very well and we can get the GNAC championship like we did three years ago,” Malinowski said.