NCAA Regionals: Final thoughts

Before we move on to our final championship meet of the cross country season – ECAC/IC4A on Saturday at Van Cortlandt Park – and then onto the long grind of track seasons (indoor and outdoor), here are some final thoughts on the snow and mud and muck in Buffalo for the NCAA Northeast Regional.

As noted, our women’s team racing to 11^th place for the second consecutive year is a big deal to us and really validates the hard work of our athletes and the consistently high level we have reached within the program. It’s a testament to the women who put in the work – every day, every week, every month, every season. They are relentless warriors, and it is an honor to be associated with them. The conditions affect every athlete and every team in different ways; for us, it seems to bring out the best in our unit. And that’s great.

On the men’s side, we can say similar things. While our goal was to finish anywhere between 15^th and 20^th place, in analyzing our 21^st-place finish you’ll note that we finished ahead of numerous teams that were ranked ahead of us and/or finished ahead of us all fall. In some cases, we outdistanced these teams by a wide margin, and our men did it in a progressive fashion by constantly improving their team standing as the race unfolded. So while we were hoping for slightly better, we know that on this day our men did what they tend to do here: Grinded it out and overachieved.

Mostly, what I’ll remember from this is the sheer enormity of effort. At the end of the race, we had athletes covered in mud, sweat, tears and a little blood. They were shivering cold, despite the intensity of their racing. A few of them couldn’t feel their extremities. They all finished – strong, hard, proud – and they all “left it out there” (one of those well-worn coaching clichés that I don’t even like, but actually fits here), and to summarize, they made us proud. It was, to paraphrase the T-shirts, a great day to be a Running Red Fox.