At 8:15 Saturday morning, the Pomona-Pitzer Men’s Cross Country team was already battling at its second race of the season at UC Riverside. The 8K course weaves through flat orange groves, and the trail is mostly dirt, producing fast early-season times. By the end of the race, six of Pomona-Pitzer’s top seven runners had run personal bests. Even without key runners Anders Crabo PO ’12 and Tristan Roberts PO ’11, the team was able to earn a 10th-place finish out of 30 teams.

Leading the Sagehens were seniors and co-captains John Mering PO and Brian Gillis PO, who finished in 25:09 and 25:33, respectively. In the team’s first match-up with CMS, Mering’s finish, first out of all SCIAC competers, was especially impressive. Charlie Enscoe PO ’12 also asserted himself as a crucial runner for the Sagehens in their first two races, finishing second for the team at UC Irvine a week earlier and fourth at Riverside. Mering, Gillis, and Enscoe lead a team that has seen drastic improvements over the past two seasons and that promises strong future seasons with a talented slew of underclassmen.

One obvious change in the past two years was the new head coach, Tony Boston. Many of the team’s veterans noted that this year, the team and Coach Boston both have the advantage of having a year of working together under their belts.

“The team and coach continue to get more and more comfortable with each other, and that’s been really nice this season,” one returnee said.

Coach Boston is keen on having his runners set goals, both for themselves and the team. Assistant coach Torrey Olson views Coach Boston’s regimental structure as something that has given the team a new level of focus.

“When people show up to work out it is clear how each workout will help the runners reach their goals. On a day-to-day basis this has been really helpful for the team,” Olson said.

As is the case for many teams in the beginning of the season, younger runners must step up to fill places left by last year’s graduating seniors. Torrey Olson PO ’09, Brendan Randall-Meyers PO ’09, and Ian Monsma PO ’09 were three key members of last year’s team. Despite the loss of these runners, the Sagehens are loose and cohesive enough that they aren’t concerned about their ability to perform well throughout this season.

Mering exemplified this attitude best, saying, “our body hair per person ratio went down substantially when we lost Brendo, and it’s going to be a lot harder to...‘pull a Monsma’ with Ian gone.”

Clearly some of the contributions of these graduates cannot be replaced. Mering and the team are confident, however, that they will be able to step up and fill these gaps on race days.

The team is especially looking to a close and talented group of sophomores to step up. Crabo, Colin Flyn PI ’12, Hale Shaw PI ’12, and Paul Balmer PO ’12 all proved themselves to be serious threats to their opponents during track season last spring. Crabo and Flynn were two of the three Pomona-Pitzer men’s track members to take home a SCIAC championship title last April.

At Riverside this weekend, Colin, Hale and Balmer finished fifth, sixth, and seventh for the team in 26:56, 27:08.2, and 27:08.9, respectively. Crabo missed the race due to a minor ankle injury, and his absence was palpable within this close-knit group.

“Not having Anders I think made a pretty big impact this weekend,” Balmer said. “The four of us all train together and ran really similar times last week [at Irvine], and without being able to pack up it hurt us. We were thrown off I think, but we’re ready to come back hard.”

Alex Johnson PI ’13 put in a surprising performance with a third-place team finish in 26:16 this Saturday—a dramatic improvement from his eighth-place team finish at Irvine last weekend.

“I was surprised to see a freshman mixing it up with the top seven,” Olson said. “I didn’t think that would happen this season.”

The upperclassmen have commented that, in general, the freshmen are in better shape coming into this season than last year’s were, a promising observation given the success of the current sophomores.

Runners and coaches both agree that what is perhaps most encouraging about the past two weekends’ performances is the fact that they were completed amidst weeks of heavy training. Even with tired legs, the Sagehens are showing their potential. Coaches Boston and Olson both said they are excited to see what the men will be able to do when they are well rested. In the next six weeks before SCIAC championships and eight before Regionals, the runners will have to put in more hard work and recover well in order to battle against the best teams in the conference and region.

As Mering advises, fitness is only half the battle when it comes to racing. “There are some major things outside of practice that can contribute to a solid season. For example, sleep is critical. Diet is also huge. Usain Bolt attributes a lot of his success to diet. He eats tons of yams and chicken nuggets. I hope to eat lots of yams and chicken nuggets this year.”