Coming off of a solid performance at Heps at the end of October, the cross country teams headed to the NCAA Northeast Regional Championships at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. on Saturday. As the teams reflect on their performances, there are some mixed reviews: the men were able to secure seventh place, led by junior Nate Edelman with a time of 31:18 for ninth place overall in the field. The women performed in a similar fashion, placing sixth overall and led by senior Stephanie Pancoast, who put up a final time of 22:40 for 12th place overall in the field.

For the men, the close of the season at Regionals for many of the runners was taken in different ways: while Nate Edelman performed well, securing ninth place with an impressive time of 31:18, the adverse conditions of the course may have contributed to some of the runners having to change their strategy on race day.

“Personally, I was not very happy with how I ran because I had some trouble with my spikes,” said junior Matt De Silva. “But overall, I’m happy with the team. I think many of us were concerned if Edelman would perform well, and I know that a lot of the seniors just wanted to have good races because it was their last one. I’m not sure if the conditions affected everyone, but all teams have the same conditions to deal with, so it’s more a question of who’s ready to run tough.”

The Red men placed seventh overall behind Syracuse (first), Iona (second), Providence (third), Columbia (fourth), Dartmouth (fifth) and Brown (sixth). The Cornell runners in the top-7 behind Edelman included senior Charlie Hatch in 36th place (32:28), junior Max Kasak in 41st (32:43), senior Peter Loy in 70th (33:15), senior Joel Frost-Tift in 79th (33:23), De Silva in 88th (33:36) and senior Dale Taylor in 97th (33:53). The thought on many runners’ minds was that of satisfaction, but many also thought that there could have been improvements in the overall performance of the team.

“Of course, I was happier with my performance at Heps because I didn’t do as well in Regionals,” De Silva said. “But as a team, the coaches really didn’t touch on whether or not they were satisfied with our performance, but I think we could’ve beaten Brown and Dartmouth, so I guess there was room for improvement.”

The women came out of their race with similar feelings: with a sixth place overall team finish, there was only a 13-point spread between Cornell in sixth place (153) and Stony Brook in third place (140). The Red’s top-7 behind Pancoast included freshman Genna Hartung in 24th place (22:56), freshman Kelsey Karys in 29th (23:11), freshman Katie Kellner in 43rd (23:27), sophomore Meghan Brown in 45th (23:29), senior Erin Roberts in 60th (23:48) and junior Maura Carroll in 128th (24:50). Since Regionals had final results that were so close, it left some of the women wondering what could have been.

“The race was kind of bittersweet,” Hartung said. “I thought it was our best team race by far, and there were only 13 points between us and the third-place finisher. Everyone did so well, and I’m so proud of everyone for how well they raced. … I thought it was similar to our performance at Heps, except this time, the course was in awful condition and was really hard to run on. So I think the people that had the best races were the ones that were able to change their strategy and find better places to run … like on dry spots.”

The cross country teams will have their final meet of the season on Nov. 23 at the NCAA Championships at Indiana State University. While the Regionals race was the last fall meet for most of the runners, it gave many of them a frame of reference of what to build and improve on as they head towards the track season in the spring.

“We treat this period [between the cross country and track seasons] as almost another summer in a sense,” De Silva said. “We focus on base training, and we just try to get out there and run as many miles as we can to get ready for the spring.”

“I want to remember the way the season ended,” Hartung said. “We all did really well, and I want to remember that feeling when I go into the spring track season so I can run as well as I possibly can.”