In the midst of the weekend hysteria of Harwood Halloween and Homecoming, the women’s cross-country team managed to wake up early on Saturday morning to run in the SCIAC Championships. The women’s team, coached by Kirk Reynolds and led by senior co-captains Anastasia Finnegan and Leah Barnes, finished in second place, behind a very strong Claremont-Mudd-Scripps team.

The meet was a very successful one for many Sagehen runners, the top four of whom placed second, fifth, ninth, and fourteenth. Anastasia Finnegan and Leah Barnes, who came in first and second, respectively, both in last year’s SCIAC Championships and in this year’s SCIAC Multi-duals, came in second and fifth this year on the five thousand meter course with times of 19:38 (Finnegan), and 20:07 (Barnes). Finnegan and Barnes had continued to follow a rigorous training schedule in preparation for the upcoming Regional and National meets, according to Coach Reynolds who "underestimated how much the work would take out of them," and therefore could not perform up to their usual standards in the SCIAC Championships. Finnegan was nevertheless named the SCIAC Runner of the Year for the second year in a row. Finnegan, Barnes, and ninth place finisher Andrea Clemons (class of ’02) were named to the First Team All Conference. Fourteenth place freshman runner Kelsey Ferguson was named to the Second Team All Conference. Ferguson commenced her season as the team’s ninth runner and finished as the team’s fourth runner. As for team scores, CMS won with 37 points, our own Sagehens placed second with 51, Redlands placed third with 63, followed by La Verne with 99, Cal Lutheran with 123, and Cal Tech with 176. The scores were calculated by adding up the place numbers of each school’s top five finishers, with the lowest score winning.

Even though the SCIAC season came to a close this weekend with the championship meet, the cross-country season is not over yet for Pomona-Pitzer. The team will be running in the Division Three Western Regional in Portland, Oregon on November 13th. The Regional then takes the members of the first two of the 21 competing teams, as well as the top six individual runners not on those first two teams and enrolls them in the Nationals which will take place on November 20th at the University of Wisconsin in Osh-Kosh. Coach Reynolds is skeptical about the possibility of a team birth in the Nationals, but is optimistic about the chances for Finnegan and Barnes to make the top six individual runners group. Barnes went to the Nationals last year and finished strongly in 51st place.

Coach Reynolds is proud not only of the team’s success in meets this year, but also of the way the team has functioned, come together, and worked hard. When asked to comment on the season, Reynolds said optimistically: "This season has been a whole lot of fun, and I am very impressed by the amount of work we managed to get into such a short season." The team’s success is especially commendable in light of the fact that they lost two of their top seven runners over the course of the season to injury and leave of absence.

For now, the team is looking ahead to the Regional and National meets coming up this month, hoping to continue to be successful and keep their spirits high.