(Photo by Eldon Lindsay/Cornell Athletics)
Championship season is finally here. After months of racing and many more long months of training, Cornell’s men’s and women’s cross country teams will toe the line at the Heptagonal Cross Country Championships, looking to take home the title of Ivy League champions. This Saturday, October 30th, at Princeton’s West Windsor Fields, Cornell will face off against its Ivy rivals: Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale. As always, the path to the title is tough.
On the men’s side, Princeton, ranked 18th nationally and running with home-course advantage, is the favorite, followed closely behind by Harvard, ranked 25th nationally. To take down these two powerhouses, Cornell’s top seven will have to be at the top of their game. Ranked 7th in the Northeast region above Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Brown, a top 3 finish is a real possibility, something the Cornell men have not done since 2014. Cornell is coming into this race red hot, winning three of their past four races.
For the women, there is no clear favorite, with Princeton (ranked 4th in the Mid-Atlantic region), Harvard (ranked 4th in the Northeast), Columbia (ranked 5th in the Northeast), and Yale (ranked 6th in the Northeast) all ranked very close together. Cornell, ranked 13th in the Northeast, is only ranked ahead of one other Ivy in the region: unranked Brown. A victory for Cornell would be a great underdog story, but do not count these women out: they are coming off a win at the R.K. Munsey XC Invitational and a 5th place finish at the Penn State Invitational, where they defeated the one other Ivy in the race, Penn.
Two years ago, at the last Heptagonal Cross Country Championships, Penn took home the title on the men’s side and Columbia won it for the women. Cornell finished in sixth in both races. The last time either Cornell team won was in 2012 when the Cornell women claimed the title–here’s to changing that.
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