On a brisk Halloween Friday morning in the Bronx, the Tiger women left everything they had on the gritty, testing course of Van Cortlandt Park. Women’s cross country dominated the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships (Heps) with a team score of 27 — an impressive 55 points ahead of second-place Yale — to capture their second consecutive league title.
A team’s score is made up of the places of its top five runners, with the overall first-place finisher receiving one point, overall second-place two points, and so on.
Princeton soared not just as a team but also individually, with junior Anna McNatt becoming the Ivy League Champion and sophomore teammate Meg Madison trailing by only seven seconds behind for the silver. First-year Caroline Barton crossed in fifth, earning her a place on the First-Team All-Ivy honor in her debut season.
The scoring team for Princeton included all grades, showing an incredible depth. McNatt described the incoming first-years to The Daily Princetonian as “gritty, hard-working, and driven [runners] who came to Princeton ready to contribute to the team.” This incoming talent has propelled not only the team’s success, but culture and spirit, McNatt said.
McNatt told the ‘Prince’ that the team “had everything we needed — each other — and had done all of the work we needed to do to win, so actually executing it felt so gratifying.”
The Princeton women came into the meet with a “calm confidence in themselves,” framing a win not as “pressure but more so something that we knew we were capable of,” she said. The determined, levelheaded mindset allowed the Tigers to execute when demanded.
This was the first time since 2012 that the top two spots were claimed by the same team, underscoring Princeton’s dominance and fulfilling the squad’s season-long goal of expanding from last year’s Triple Crown success. Both McNatt and Madison shaved multiple seconds off of the previous Princeton Heps record of 20:47.4, previously held by Olympian Elizabeth Bird ’17.
Winning with her teammate Madison was “a testament to the work we’ve been doing and the consistency we’ve had since the start of the year,” McNatt said. This teamwork showcased a consistency in workouts, races, and morale that propelled the Tigers sweeping success at Heps.
The five scoring Tigers all earned All-Ivy League honors, with sophomore Emma de Jong crossing in eighth place, claiming her first top-10 performance at Heps. Senior Maddie Cramer rounded out the Princeton scoring team in 11th place, also improving her standing from last season by 20 places.
Princeton showed off the depth of their team with eight runners in the top 25, a complete dominance of the field, as the team worked together to ensure a successful postseason run. The Tigers’ cohesive pack running and competitive edge demonstrated their determination and grit.
With the win, women’s cross country claimed their 11th Ivy League title, surpassing Harvard’s 10 for the most by an Ivy program. McNatt described this definitive win as the motivation needed to “give us the confidence we needed to see ourselves as NCAA Championship qualifiers.”
The Tigers look ahead to continue their upward streak on the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regionals on Nov. 14 in Bethlehem, Pa.
Cadigan Perriello is a Sports contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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