The cross country team hosted Lehigh University in a rivalry meet on Saturday, suffering losses in the men’s 8K and women’s 6K against the Mountain Hawks.
Junior Elizabeth Borah led the way for the women, finishing sixth overall in the women’s race with a time of 22:33.4.
“I think we felt good and definitely kind of thought we had a bit more of a chance to beat them,” Borah said of the meet. “We’ve been doing a lot of work on the course, so I think overall our energy was pretty good going into it.”
Senior Casey MacElhiney came in behind Borah at eighth place with a 22:46.4 finish, and freshman Anya Kazemi placed 12th with a 23:25.7 finish.
“I think we didn’t perform to the best of our abilities, but I definitely think that we gave it everything that we had and there’s a lot that we can work on moving forward,” Borah said.
“It’s early in the season, so it makes me optimistic,” she continued.
On the men’s side, senior Emil Arangala’s fourth-place finish topped the Leopards’ leaderboard with a finish of 25:16.0. Juniors Justin Brown, Titan Casey and Quinn Worrell followed with fifth, 12th and 19th-place finishes with times of 25:24.2, 26:13.4 and 26:51.3, respectively.
“Overall, it didn’t go as expected,” Casey said. “However, there’s multiple learning opportunities we can take away from the race. We can definitely learn and build on that experience to further improve the rest of the season, especially at leagues.”
Having gotten off to a tough start to the season, the team is looking to prioritize staying mentally sharp.
“I think for me, one of my biggest struggles has been the mental aspect,” Borah said, adding that she ended up dropping out in the previous meet. “I think the second lap of the course, especially, I was thinking that I wanted to drop out, so I think that was a big stepping stone for me.”
“I think just conquering that mental barrier was really important,” she added.
The team will compete next on Oct. 5 at Lehigh University in the Paul Short Invitational.
“Our mindsets are the same — run together, run strong,” Casey said. “This meet doesn’t really change any of our goals we had, it solidifies that we got to keep heading in our original direction.”