Photo courtesy of Ramapo Athletics
The men’s and women’s cross-country teams looked to win the NCAA Division III Regional Championships on Saturday in Castile, New York while competing in very muddy track conditions.
The men’s team finished in seventh place out of 40 teams in the field while the women’s team finished in 24th place out of 37 teams.
Third year head coach Justina Cassavell felt that avoiding overtraining and preventing injury were essential to success at the NCAA Division III Regional Championships.
“One of the major training goals is to not have kids get hurt and miss chunks of time heading into any championship, so it’s super important and we did a good job on that end,” said Cassavell. “We didn’t have any serious injuries, we had our whole team, and it’s definitely a focus of ours.”
For the men’s team, freshman Matt Tuohy led the way with a 16th place finish in the 8K race with a running time of 25:49.90. Tuohy was followed by senior Paul Juelis, who finished in 20th place with a time of 25:56.0. Tuohy and Juelis were both named to the NCAA All-Region Team as a result of their contributions.
Sophomore Jeremy Hernandez, who owns school records for the fastest 3,000-meter, 800-meter and mile runs, came in 37th place at 26:17.4. Senior Maximino Meneses, the fourth Roadrunner to cross the finish line, finished in 58th with a time of 26:38.7. Sophomore Mark Battista finished in 77th place overall and fifth place for Ramapo with a running time of 26:56.80.
The sixth Roadrunner to finish the race was junior Tom Moore, who came in 81st place overall with a running time of 27:00.6. Christopher Dugan finished the race with a running time of 27:35.5, which rounded out the men’s top runners.
For the women’s team, freshman Emily Croonquist and sophomore Paris Hughed led the way in the 6K, each finishing the race at 24:01.00.
Senior Emily Brock came in 144th place overall with a running time of 25:07.2. Fellow seniors Stacey Slaughter, Graciela Morilla, and Alicia Green finished in with times of 25:46.00, 26:31.00, and 27:20.00, respectively.
Juelis put a lot of emphasis on conditioning during the months leading to the Regional Championships.
“When you’re quickly approaching a regional meet, you don’t want to overtrain too much or get too tired for the race, so all the conditioning kind of comes the months before the regional meet,” said Juelis.
Brock felt that muscular endurance played a critical role in the Regional Championships.
“It’s really important to have muscular endurance especially because we were running in the mud, so our muscles got very tired, so it felt like you’re running in sand, but I think it did really well for us,” said Brock.
pmcguire@ramapo.edu
