Women’s cross country took first place and men’s cross country took second at the NCAA Division III Mideast Regional Cross Country Championships on Saturday, hosted at Connecticut College. The women’s team won with a score of 59 points, triumphing over second-place RPI by 51 points. The men’s team snagged second place with 76 points, besting third-place Middlebury by 42 points but falling short of RPI by 47 points.
Kate Tuttle ’28 led the women’s team with a fourth-place finish and a time of 21:08.50 on the 6k course. The men’s team was led by Chuckie Namiot ’25, who claimed second place on the 8k course with a time of 24:11.80. The women’s first-place finish clinched them a spot at the NCAA Division III National Championship in Terre Haute, Ind., while the men received an at-large qualifying bid.
After Tuttle, Kate Swann ’26 took 10th place with a time of 21:36.50, and Tamar Byl-Brann ’27 placed 11th, finishing exactly one second after Swann. Co-captain Nora Johnson ’25 placed 15th with a time of 21:55.60, and Lily Yampolsky ’28 rounded out the scorers for the women’s team with a 19th place finish in 21:58.20. The sixth and seventh Eph runners, Charlene Peng ’26 and Jordan Liss-Riordan ’27, followed closely behind their teammates, allowing all seven Ephs to finish before the top five of any other team.
“It was a great day for the whole team,” Tuttle told the Record. “A goal that our coach set for us was to get the green arrows in the results, especially for the second half of the race, which means we were moving up. We did that really well.”
Head coach Dusty López ’01 echoed Tuttle’s sentiment. “Our women ran out in front very confidently,” he wrote in an email to the Record. “They stayed in control of the entire race and finished well clear of the field.”
The women’s team has seen striking success this season, winning each of its last five races and achieving victories of 50- to 60-point margins on multiple occasions. “We are in a really solid place and are a really solid pack-running team,” Tuttle said, who has consistently led the team.
Tuttle said her success this season has been a welcome surprise, since she mostly ran track — not cross country — in high school. “I kind of figured I would mostly be cheering on the team,” she said. “It just makes such a huge difference to be able to train with such a motivated and supportive group of girls.”
Malcolm Oakes ’28 was the second Eph across the finish line for the men’s team, clocking in at 14th place with a time of 24:58.60. Rick Yanashita ’26 came in behind Oakes at 15th place with a time of 25:59.20. The next two Williams runners, Luke Zanuck ’26 and Keiyu Mamiya ’28, also came in as a pair at 22nd and 23rd place, respectively.
“The point of regionals is just to get to nationals,” Namiot said. “Winning the meet guarantees you a spot at nationals, but there are also 22 at-large bids. We made sure we did enough to go to nationals, but we wanted to save a little bit and be fresh for when we go to Terre Haute next Saturday.”
The race, Namiot continued, was just another opportunity for the men’s team to work on the strategy they’ve been deploying all season. “We try to establish our position early on and then try to be on the offense in the second half of the race to make sure we’re moving up,” he said. Namiot said the team has done a “decent” job executing this strategy, adding that he looks forward to making some slight improvements in the week leading up to nationals.
López’s assessment was similar to Namiot’s: “For the men, our gap from first to fifth runner was a little bigger than usual, but we still did enough to finish a strong second,” he wrote.
Namiot also added that the strength of the NESCAC made it possible to go into the race with realistic expectations. “In the mideast … four of [the top teams] were NESCACs and the other one was RPI, who we raced earlier in the season,” he said. “We had seen all the best teams a bunch of times and we knew what we were going into.”
The mideast region was also very competitive on the women’s side, Johnson reflected. “After the race we realized seven teams out of the 32 total teams in the region qualified for nationals, showing it definitely wasn’t going to be easy to win regionals,” she said.
Coming off the team’s success, Johnson shared excitement about racing on the national stage. “We realized that nobody on our team has been to nationals more than once,” she said. “But I think this year we have a chance to podium — that is, be in the top four finishers.”
Namiot similarly expressed optimism for the men’s team. “We haven’t had a day where we’ve put everything together yet, and if we do put everything together at nationals, we’ll be a very good team,” he said.
“Our best results will come if we are able to stick together, get excited, and finish with a small gap,” López wrote. “We’ve been doing that most of the year, so we have strong reason to be optimistic for the race.”
