Heps a tough time for cross country

For cross country, a Friday meet in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx turned out to be anything but a walk in the park.

Both the Princeton men's and women's cross country teams had weak performances as Columbia cruised to a sweep of the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships.

"I felt like a guy who had never run a day in his life," senior Austin Smith said.

Smith placed 13th, with a time of 25:13 over the eight-kilometer course and finished second for the Tiger men. Junior Frank Macreery was the first Princeton runner across the line at eighth place (25:01).

The Tigers struggled to a sixth-place finish against what was thought to be the most evenly matched set of teams in the Ivy League in years.

"We raced 12 guys and probably no more than three ran anywhere near what they were capable of," Smith said, pointing out that freshman Frank Tinney was unable to run due to illness and junior Jim Flannery was forced to run shortly after catching a cold.

The women came up with a stronger overall showing than the men but still found themselves unable to overcome rival Columbia, falling to the Lions by 13 points.

Junior Cack Ferrell placed fifth (17:25) for the shorter five-kilometer women's course as junior Meredith Lambert (seventh, 17:29) and sophomore Mia Swenson (10th, 17:48) joined Ferrell in the top ten.

Despite having three top-10 finishers to Columbia's two — the Lions took first and ninth place — the Tigers fell short deeper in their ranks as the Lions placed all five scoring runners in the top 15.

In their last meeting, Princeton outran a strong Columbia team, triggering speculation that the odds were in the Tigers' favor for wining the Ivy League. The Tigers beat the Lions convincingly at the NCAA Pre-Nationals meet only two weeks prior to Heps.

Both the men's and women's teams have several more races ahead of them before the end of the season. The men have the NCAA District Championships in mid-November, where the top two teams advance to the National Championships held shortly before Thanksgiving. They will probably have to defeat Georgetown or Villanova. Both are nationally ranked.

"If we have a spectacular day, we can go [to Nationals] — but that's pretty much what it's going to take," Smith said.

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Otherwise, the men will run in the IC4A Championship meet, also to be held in Van Cortlandt Park.

The women's team will race next at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional meet, where they will also have the opportunity to either advance to the National Championship meet or else to finish their season with the ECAC Championships, to be held in the Bronx as well.