Men’s and women’s cross country traveled to Penn State on Friday to race in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships with nationals qualification at stake. The top two teams in each division automatically advanced to next Saturday’s NCAA Championships in Madison, WI., while teams that failed had to wait and see if their season’s exploits would merit one of the 13 at-large selections to the meet.
The women mounted a second-half surge to finish fourth out of 30 total teams but ultimately missed out on an at-large selection to the big dance.
The No. 18 men, meanwhile, took second place in perhaps the most chaotic finish of the day and punched their ticket to their fourth straight national meet.
Women place 4th in the region, Scatchard qualifies for NCAAs individually
On the women’s side, the Mid-Atlantic region is one of the country’s strongest, boasting two top ten squads — No. 5 West Virginia and No. 8 Georgetown — as well as No. 20 Penn State, who enjoyed home field advantage on their 6-kilometer course.
Princeton’s early race formation emulated their Heps strategy, with senior Mena Scatchard and sophomore Anna McNatt working together up front and the rest of the Tigers packed up a few seconds behind.
After sitting in fifth for the first half of the race, Princeton overtook Villanova by the 4800m mark but still trailed third place Penn State by 32 points. Ultimately, Princeton would narrow, but not erase, the gap to Penn State and finish fourth with a score of 99 points to the Nittany Lions’ 85.
Olympian Ceili McCabe led the Mountaineers to the individual and team titles, dethroning three-time defending Mid-Atlantic champion Georgetown 41–58.
Scatchard dipped under the 20 minute barrier, clocking 19:58 for 9th place. McNatt and first-year Meg Madison earned All-Region honors alongside their senior teammate, finishing in 15th and 19th respectively.
Madison and sophomore Peyton Leigh both moved up through the field at every recorded split, with Leigh placing 26th to join the Tigers’ scoring five for the first time this season. Senior Lexi Allen rounded out the top five in 30th place.
With the placement, the Tigers narrowly missed out on a NCAAs bid. Non-automatic selections are determined by points that are awarded for beating an already qualified squad during the regular season. Princeton had zero points until Harvard with two points was selected at-large, giving them one, but Harvard was the last team in.
Head coach Brad Hunt emphasized that contesting some of the bigger, further away early-season meets where more points were up for grabs could have disrupted the crucial development of the young team.
“We think the schedule was exactly what it needed to be for this young squad,” Hunt told the Daily Princetonian. “I recognized the need to keep it as simple as we could so the team could grow and be able to come together the way that we did at the very end of the season.”
While the team did not punch their ticket, the Orange and Black will be represented in Madison next weekend. Scatchard was selected as one of the region’s four individual qualifiers, made up of the first four finishers not on a qualified team, provided that they placed in the top 25 overall.
Having already proven herself against the Ivy League and Mid-Atlantic’s best, Scatchard is ready for the next challenge. “I’m feeling super excited for NCAAs and to see how I stack up against the best in the country,” she wrote to the ‘Prince.’
As a team, the Tigers still have so much to be proud of this season and a lot to look forward to. Princeton captured their first Ivy League title in nine years, will return five of their seven regional racers next year, and those departing have set a winning standard.
“I think that we have all learned so much from our seniors this year,” Madison told the ‘Prince.’ “I can’t wait to keep building on the momentum we have going in the coming seasons.”
Princeton men secure trip to nationals in wild finish
For the regional and national championships, the men cover 10-kilometers rather than the standard 8k. Of the seven Tigers who toed the line, only two had ever previously contested the extended distance.
A 1-2 finish from Liam Murphy and Marco Langon helped pre-race favorite No. 14 Villanova take care of business, winning the day with 50 points. The second ticket to Madison, however, would come down to the slimmest of margins.
In the race’s early stages, Princeton settled into second place and stuck together in a tight pack. Just before the midway point, a frantic charge by the Navy men ousted the Tigers from the auto-qualifying positions.
No. 29 Georgetown also steadily moved up throughout the race, and with just 1200m to go, they too overtook the Tigers, who now sat in fourth place.
“I heard from my coach and some of my teammates alongside the course that we were losing to Villanova, Navy, and Georgetown,” junior Jackson Shorten wrote to the ‘Prince.’ “Up about 100m ahead of me, I saw 3 Navy Singlets and 2 Georgetown. I knew that if we wanted to get an automatic spot, I needed to do my job and finish ahead of those guys.”
Junior Myles Hogan led the Tigers as he has done all year, finishing in 7th place with a time of 29:42. Senior Nicholas Bendtsen was next to cross the line for Princeton in 10th, cracking the Mid-Atlantic top ten for the second consecutive year.
Despite already having run 800m further than he had ever raced before, Shorten flew home over the final 1200m, improving five places to 14th overall and posting the second fastest closing split of the field. “I put the pain elsewhere, dug deep for my teammates, [and] found myself ahead of the guys I needed to beat at the finish line,” he said.
Senior Harrison Witt, an established star on the track, placed 22nd in his second straight race as one of the Tigers’ top five.
With all five Midshipmen already in, the Hoyas’ fifth capped their squad’s score just one second before junior Connor McCormick would do the same for the Tigers in 27th place. When the final results were tabulated, only one point separated the three NCAA Championships hopefuls.
Navy, 81. Georgetown, 80. Princeton, 80.
To break a tie in NCAA cross country, teams are evaluated based on head to head matchups between their one through five runners. The Tigers took the first three matchups, while Georgetown took the No. 4 and No. 5 matchups, as Princeton’s top three secured the 80 (3–2) to 80 (2–3) victory.
While exciting, the Tigers’ second place finish out of the 27–team field was inconsequential for their nationals qualification chances. Strong performances at Nuttycombe and Heps ensured that Princeton would be present at NCAAs even if they had finished as low as fourth in the region, but Shorten remarked “we didn’t want to settle for anything less than our best.”
Georgetown was the only team to be selected at-large from the region and will join the Tigers and the Wildcats on the big stage next weekend.
“The team is feeling confident and excited for nationals,” Shorten said. “We train for the big moments, and I believe that we are ready for a historic performance.”
Luke Stockless is a contributing Sports writer for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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