Women’s cross country took first place with a score of 35 points at the NESCAC championships on Saturday, marking the Ephs’ fifth consecutive year as NESCAC champions. Their 52-point victory over the second-place Amherst Mammoths, who scored 87 points, is the largest winning margin the race has seen in 20 years.
Kate Tuttle ’28 led the Ephs across the finish line with a time of 20:49, securing a fourth place finish on Bowdoin’s 6k course — which had not hosted a NESCAC championship since 2012.
“That [margin] was definitely significant,” said Tamar Byl-Brann ’27, who placed fifth with a time of 20:50.
Head coach Dusty Lopez noted that this year’s victory was earned by an almost entirely new group of runners. “The women were defending champions, but the 2024 team is very different from last year,” Lopez wrote in an email to the Record. “Four of our top five from 2023 were not in this year’s race, so this group adopted a new identity, focused on running together, and that allowed us to show our resilience and depth.”
The race started fast, with the top runners competing at a sub-5:40 pace for the first mile. The Ephs and Mammoths were tied at the one-mile marker, but the Ephs were able to pull ahead in the middle of the race.
Kate Swann ’26, who placed sixth with a time of 20:53, explained how the deliberate mid-race push paid off. “Our strategy was [to] start off in a good position, but don’t start off… going all out, and then really try and focus on moving up and trying to pick off more people,” she said. The Ephs’ top seven runners executed this strategy, as they all either held their starting position or moved up during the race.
Even the team’s strategy, however, did not anticipate the speed of the first mile, co-captain Nora Johnson ’25 noted. “[5:40 pace] is not always super common at the NESCAC meet,” she said. “So even though we tried to be a little bit more conservative, [we] actually did get out pretty hot with the whole field.”
The Ephs were able to secure the fourth, fifth, and sixth positions at the finish line, leading to their historic win. “Not letting there be gaps between a lot of people on the team really helps us have the big margin over other teams and the lowest score,” Johnson said. “I think that’s something that we’ve executed this year a lot better than we did last year.”
The top seven Ephs finished the race in two packs, with Tuttle, Byl-Brann, and Swann — the College’s first, second, and third scorers — securing fourth, fifth, and sixth places in the race. Lily Yampolsky ’28 and Jordan Liss-Riordan ’27 rounded out the Ephs’ scorers with ninth and 11th place finishes, and Johnson and Charlene Peng ’26, finished at 14th and 16th, respectively.
Johnson noted that the Ephs’ top seven finishers spanned all four class years, highlighting the depth of the team and the strength of its underclass students.
“There were points where the race felt difficult,” Tuttle wrote in an email to the Record. “But having the opportunity to race alongside my teammates definitely made the challenge much more manageable and motivated me to keep pushing.”
In cross country, a team’s top five runners count toward its score, with the sixth and seventh runners increasing the team’s score if they finish before another team’s fifth runner. The Ephs’ “second seven” finishers would have placed ahead of five other teams’ top seven had they competed directly against them, Johnson said. “With a young team, [it is] so cool to see that and [it is] really promising for the coming years,” she added.
The Ephs compete next on Nov. 16 at the NCAA Div. III Regional Championship at Connecticut College in New London, Conn.
