Junior Cack Ferrell shares at least one thing in common with George Washington — an impressive victory on Princeton Battlefield.
Ferrell led the women's cross country team to a rout of Harvard and Yale on Saturday with a course-record time of 17 minutes, 12 seconds in the final race on the course.
The men's team was not quite as dominant at the Notre Dame Invitational, fighting its way to an 11th-place finish.
Senior Austin Smith came up with a breakthrough performance. His time of 23:49 that put him just nine seconds behind the lead in a race that included a strong field of 24 teams.
"During the race, I could almost feel a freaking cocoon coming off me," Smith said. "I finally ran a more evenly distributed effort, and it gave me the first national-class result of my career. The rest of the season is going to be an absolute thrill."
While the men battled through a large field, the women capitalized on the smaller field of competitors at H-Y-Ps. Princeton runners occupied positions four through eight in the individual results, an impressive display of pack running.
Junior Meredith Lambert (17:31), sophomore Mia Swenson (17:50), senior Marian Bihrle (18:08), sophomore Catha Mullen (18:11) and sophomore Claire Filloux (18:13) helped the Tigers finish with a final score of 23, well ahead of Yale, 54, and Harvard, 57.
"The team definitely performed this weekend," Ferrell said.
The women were able to stay together throughout the race, but two unlucky setbacks tempered the men's efforts this weekend. Freshman Frank Tinney lost a spike early on in the race and had to recover it, causing him to lose approximately 100 meters to the pack. Later in the race, a competitor clipped junior Frank McCreery, which also ended up costing the Tigers valuable points.
"It's tough to recover from that," Smith said of his team's bad luck. "Pretty much everyone else stepped up big."
This is especially true of juniors Ben Stern and Jim Flannery and freshman Bud Grote, who all showed strong improvement.
Still, Princeton came up with a strong top five that included Smith, McCreery (51st, 24:39), sophomore Paul Ross (76th, 24:55), Stern (91st, 25:09) and sophomore Mark Dalgarno (132nd, 25:40).
"A lot of guys are on the rise right now, and if we can stay healthy and stay away from bad luck, then we'll be back in business," Smith said.
Ferrell also expressed confidence in her team, especially after a somewhat disappointing team performance last weekend at the Griak Invitational in her home state of Minnesota. At the end of the month, Princeton will face the seven other teams of the Ancient Eight at the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships, to be held in the Bronx.
While the Tigers are confident about their chances to win the meet after this weekend's strong win, Ferrell noted that both Yale and Columbia field perennially strong teams.
"I think when you open it up to eight teams, the dynamic could be completely different," Ferrell said. "The numbers game is different in a tri-meet than when there are eight teams."
Smith, too, looks forward to his team's Ivy League Heps, saying that he is "very optimistic" about the meet.
"I think our team is coming along very nicely," Smith said. "We still have about a solid month between now and then to sharpen up and get faster."
Smith noted that not all the teams that will be present at Heps have run yet, and that there is considerable parity in the league this year.
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