Their greatest victory was their most unexpected.
Despite placing only one runner in the Top 10, the NYU men's cross-country team won their first-ever NCAA National Championship on Saturday in snowy Northfield, Minn.
After running roughshod over all comers for all of autumn, the team was convinced that they'd fallen at the final hurdle again. As the men gathered together after the last runner crossed the finish line, waiting for the posted scores, no one said much. The quietest was senior Ryan Williams, who had fallen toward the start of the race and placed 53rd.
"At this level, there's not much separation, so we're all running in packs," said Williams, who ran the 8,000 meter race in 25:27. "I got tripped from behind, lost my balance and fell on my side. I've never fallen before in a race ... and I didn't run well at all, probably my worst race of the year. I was really upset after the race, because I thought I'd cost the team."
But after a 10-minute wait, the sorrow turned to jubilation.
"It takes so long for them to calculate, and a bunch of the guys were watching them post the scores," Williams said. "I was off by myself, and I heard them yelling and saw them running towards us, and that's when I knew we'd won. So as upset as I was, it only made [the victory] all the more suspenseful and all the more sweeter."
NYU ended up placing first by a good margin with 125 points. Haverford College placed second with 150 points. Cortland State (158), defending champion Calvin College (214) and University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (221) rounded out the Top 5.
The race, run in snowy weather, was very different from the muddy course of last year. Last year, the Violets finished second with 92 points, 55 behind Calvin. This year, NYU's strategy was to let senior and pacesetter Hany Abdullah, junior Jesse Schneider and Williams set the pace, and to get as close to the front as possible. The plan was forgotten as soon as Williams tripped. But that was not the end of NYU's troubles.
"I don't think we were used to running in the cold," said Abdullah, who finished in ninth place with a time of 24:51.3. "Some of the guys, including me, probably didn't get warmed up enough, and it showed in the race. I ran the first mile in 4:47, and I actually dropped from about third to 13th. I was really mad at myself, but I was able to compose myself and beat 3-4 guys towards the end.
"I thought I did OK, because I was watching Wisconsin-La Crosse and SUNY-Cortland, and their top guys placed third and fifth, so that was only a swing of a couple of points. But coach had said we needed an amazing race this weekend, and we didn't run very well."
Schneider, who finished 21st (25:05.5), said, "Our plan was to have three guys in the top 15, in an absolute worst-case scenario. We wound up having one guy finish ninth, so I didn't think we won at all. Personally, I had trouble getting out [at the start]. If you don't get out you're gonna get buried, and I've had problems with it all year and it happened again on Saturday. So at the end there, we were just hoping for a miracle, and we got one."
Senior Spenser Popeson finished 46th place (25:22.1). Right after him came senior James McCarthy (47th, 25:22.7). In addition to the team victory, Abdullah and Schneider earned All-American status for finishing in the Top 25. The individual race was won by Tyler Sigl of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville (24:24.0). In all, 32 teams competed in the race, with 280 runners finishing.
Samuel Chamberlain is sports editor. E-mail him at schamberlain@nyunews.com.
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