This newsletter came about as a way to celebrate the athletes and teams that make up this historic conference throughout the year. We plan to add regular updates with conference rankings, athlete of the week nominations, and stories about the teams that make up this great league.
A Tale of Two Meets
Two weeks out from the ECAC and IC4A Championship at Van Cortlandt Park, teams clashed throughout the country in one of the biggest weekends of the regular season in cross country. The Paul Short Invitational hosted by Lehigh University, and Notre Dame’s Joe Piane Invitational showed us the best look at where teams stand this season.
Women’s ECAC Rankings
On the women’s side, an impressive runner-up finish from Georgetown just 4 points behind USTFCCCA’s #11 UNC showed just how dominant the Hoyas expect to be this season. This moved them up to #13 in the National poll.
Liberty took the top billing for ECAC schools with their 7th place finish at the Joe Piane Invitational. Their performance helped them garner votes for the national poll just missing out on the top 30.
The top 5 ECAC teams (Syracuse, Georgetown, Providence, Harvard, and Villanova) will meet next week at the Nuttycombe Invitational in Madison, Wisconsin.
Women’s Team Spotlight - #9 Elon University
Earlier this season, the women of Elon University saw their stock rise from 11th in the USTFCCCA Southeast Region preseason poll up to 7th in the last two weeks. Their 7th place finish at Paul Short, just behind Villanova, showed that they absolutely earned that upgrade.
The Paul Short Run provided our team with the quality and depth of competition needed to prepare for the NCAA Southeast Regional in mid-November. The combination of high level competition and excellent weather propelled most of our team members to personal best 6k and 8k times. It was an awesome event!
The men saw just as much action with most of the top teams meeting in Bethlehem, PA.
While it was a quite weekend for the IC4A #1 & 2, the Villanova men best performance of the weekend finishing close behind a very deep UNC team. The Wildcats climbed 4 places to reach #17 in the USTFCCCA National Poll. Georgetown was close behind displaying some excellent pack running with a scoring spread of just 8.5 seconds at Paul Short.
Men’s Team Spotlight - #3 Villanova
The Villanova men brought a lot of fire power this weekend. Their 1-4 outpaced every other team in the field by at least a dozen points. The feat earned them the #1 spot in the Mid-Atlantic poll.
"It was a great showing for the team and an opportunity for us to build momentum last weekend at Paul Short. It was special to see a lot of the guys race well and how the weeks of training and miles we’re putting in stacks us up against some other solid teams. We're looking for forward to adding Haftu back to our lineup soon and the bigger races to come in the season."
Athletes of the Week
Each week going forward we will be accepting nominations from coaches and sports media to suggest athlete of the week nominations from any ECAC/IC4A school.
Please email all nominations to Chris Sauer at Christopher.Sauer@liu.edu
The Archive of Everything
Started by Tommy Stewart, IC4A Track has been officiating and directing cross country and track & field meets since 1991. The organization has helped continue the 142 year old tradition of the various IC4A championship meets.
Today, Todd Wolin works to archive the past championship results that can all be found here. If any coaches have results from any missing years they can be sent to Wolintodd@gmail.com or have old meet programs brought to this year’s championships