ENC men’s and women’s cross country finished their seasons on Nov. 1 at the CCC Championships, hosted at Gordon College.
Both teams placed ninth at the meet.
Despite their overall loss in the championship, sophomore runner Gregory Whitney (Henniker, N.H.) is happy with the results of the season this year.
“Last year, the men only had enough runners to qualify as a team for three out of six of our races,” Whitney said.
In order to qualify for a race, a cross-country team needs five runners to count as team.
“This year, the men qualified for every race and at one race we even had 10 men run,” Whitney continued.
In his hopes for next year, Whitney said, “I would like to try to motivate the men’s team to run more often and for us to be in shape before the season starts.”
Following suit of the expansion of men this year, the girls qualified for all but one of the races.
Junior Jill Russell (Wappingers Falls, N.Y.) talked about the struggles the women’s team faced.
“The season overall, at least for the women, was kind of a challenge since we were always stressed about having enough women to qualify. But once we got that out of the way for races it was a fun experience,” Russell commented.
Russell also said that in the next year, she hopes the team has the opportunity to sample a few different courses and try different races.
Even though cross country is an individually competitive sport, there remains a collective team spirit and unity among the runners.
“Traveling together and encouraging each other as a team really bonds us together, even if we do race individually,” Russell said.
For next year, there are high hopes that everyone returning to ENC will return to the team, and will be ready to work towards winning the 2015 championship.