The men’s and women’s cross country team traveled to the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championships, hosted by Williams College in Massachusetts. Nationally ranked teams such as Williams and Amherst were also participating in the event.
The ECAC is made up of about 70 teams on the east coast; any school that is a member is more than welcome to participate. To participate, each school must select five runners in order to score.
Head coach Thomas O’Hora was also named coach of the year by the ECAC. This is the 26th year that O’Hora has coached the Cavaliers. In those 26 years, the men’s team has won nine conference titles, three division leagues and eight gold medals.
O’Hora chose not to run every member that was able to participate in the ECAC. “We did not have enough runners due to sickness and illness,” O’Hora said. “I also made the decision to rest a couple of runners.” O’Hora chose to rest the top two runners for regionals.
“[The team] did well but Miguel ran an especially good race; and probably his best this year,” O’Hora said.
Freshman Kelly McEachern placed 93rd out of 242 runners in the event. She believes that “she started slow in the first mile but it was a good experience and would not change anything about it.”
Senior Chris Sweeney placed 84 in the men’s division and Carolyn Davis, a senior placed 37th of 242 women in the woman’s 6000 meter race.
This is said to be Miguel Amaya’s best run all season. He placed 37th out of 265 competing runners from other colleges. He was also in the top 10 freshmen to finish the race and finished nineth within those 10 freshmen. Amaya thinks all his fellow runners did very well but there is always room for improvement.
“This race is my personal best; but I did have a high goal set which was to be in the top 20,” Amaya said. Yet, he still thinks that he did well and if had to do one thing different he would not slow down in the fourth mile.