There’s a professional football team around here that knows a thing or two about winning championships even while injuries to key players are decimating the roster.
The BU women’s cross country team must be taking notes. The women held off a spirited charge from league rival Stony Brook University to capture their second straight America East Championship Saturday and their ninth in the last 10 years, despite running without both injured senior co-captains, Victoria Botticelli and Jessica Iannacci.
Marisa Ryan stepped up to fill the void, crossing the line first for the Terriers, second overall, with a time of 18:55.40. Ryan was accompanied in the top 10 by Abbey Sadowski and Christine Laakso, who finished in fourth and eighth place, respectively.
Yet the story of the day was not who ran for the Terriers, but instead, who didn’t. Aside from being the leaders of a team dominated by freshmen and sophomores, Botticelli and Iannacci had been the fourth- and fifth-best runners for the squad all season long – and those positions are critical in a sport that determines scoring based on the top five finishers from each school.
“It’s just really frustrating,” said Iannacci, who missed most of the 2004 season with an injury as well. “It’s hard because I don’t see [my teammates]. In cross country you lead by example. You don’t have to say a lot of stuff, you just show up and do your job.”
But the Terriers managed to make the best of the circumstances.
“You kind of try to redefine the situations,” said coach Bruce Lehane. “It makes a little more pressure for people, and there’s less room for error, but we have some fairly experienced people.”
And if they weren’t experienced before, they certainly are now.
Ryan, who had spent much of the year in the shadow of Laakso, burst out in a big way on Saturday, and along with Laakso and Sadowski, was named to the women’s All-Conference team for her efforts.
Though the Terriers never had a chance to practice on Binghamton University’s hilly course, Ryan was able to successfully navigate the muddied and slippery route, which included a steep downhill descent on the home stretch made even more treacherous by the elements.
“It was a good course for me,” said Ryan, who is the America East’s defending champion in the indoor 3,000-meter race. “I tend to go out pretty strong and kind of fizzle out at the end, so having the course go downhill during the last part is definitely helpful for someone who’s weaker at the end.”
Jessica Cickay and Claire Robson – whose roles became vital once Botticelli and Iannacci were deemed unfit to run – also came through for the Terriers, finishing in 12th and 14th place, respectively.
The Terriers finished the meet with 40 points, 16 fewer than second-place Stony Brook.
“I think it was the depth of our team that saw us through,” said Lehane, who noted the importance of Cickay and Robson’s races for the team. “Our women stepped up and did what they had to do in order to assure ourselves winning the title again.”
No one stepped up more than Ryan, however, who, along with Sadowski, took a lot of pressure off a team in need of a leader.
“Our top five is really interchangeable – on any given day any one runner can finish ahead of any of the others,” Lehane said. “This team is the class of the America East Conference.”
“The thing that’s great is when one of us has a bad race, someone else can step up,” Ryan said. “We’re all fairly similar … it just comes down to who feels really good.”
It may take more than just feeling good for the Terriers to continue to succeed, however, as the team has an even tougher task ahead of them at the regional championships in two weeks. A strong performance at regionals would give BU a shot at qualifying for nationals, a task made much more difficult without the pair of seniors.
“Regionals are going to be tough for us,” Lehane said. “We’re going to have to run better than this. This was good but it won’t do it at regionals … at least two of our runners are going to have to pull out the race of their lives.”
The men took fourth out of nine teams, led by sophomore Pat Hoye’s ninth-place and All-Conference nod, finishing the 8K in 26:21.3. Jake LaRoe was next, finishing 14th.
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