Injuries finally caught up to the Boston University women’s cros country team at just the wrong time, and even the best efforts of Marissa Ryan and Christine Laakso were not enough of an antidote to heal the Terriers when they needed it most.
Missing both of its senior co-captains due to injury, BU, which looked to be striding toward the NCAA Championships earlier in the season, came in fourth at the NCAA Northeast Regional meet at Franklin Park on Saturday. The Terriers finished 73 points behind meet champion Boston College. The top two teams at the event were guaranteed berths at next week’s NCAA Championship.
Ryan and Laakso paced the Terriers with 14th- and 18th-place finishes, respectively.
“We gave it a pretty good run,” said coach Bruce Lehane. “Nationals would have been a great cap to our season, but we lost a few people and that just changed what we could do.”
The absence of senior co-captains Jessica Iannacci and Victoria Botticelli forced Lehane to change his game plan, as he did two weeks ago at the America East Championship meet. Though the Terriers were able to recover to take the conference title, they were unable to duplicate their success against the top teams in the Northeast.
“If we had those other people and they ran their normal races, we would have been in good shape,” said Lehane, though he was quick to note that his team was not the only squad ravaged by injuries. “Nobody’s batting 1.000. All the teams lose somebody here, there and along the way, but that’s part of the sport.”
Regardless, missing two leaders both on and off the course showed.
“There’s no doubt in my mind, if [Botticelli and Iannacci] were there, we would have made Nationals,” said Laakso, who had more victories than any other Terrier this season. “But with what we had, we did really well.”
Laakso finished the race with a time of 21:29.7, three seconds behind Ryan and 52 seconds off the pace set by regional champion Fiona Crombie of Providence College. Abbey Sadowski finished third for the Terriers at 25th place overall, while Jennifer Melanovsky and Claire Robson rounded out the scoring for BU, finishing 42nd and 60th, respectively.
Despite not making Nationals, the Terriers found quite a few successes in Saturday’s meet, the brightest of which was a second straight strong race from Ryan. The junior followed up her second-place finish at the America East Championships with a 14th-place showing on Saturday, giving the Terriers a chance to win even without two of their top five runners.
“It was definitely one of my fastest times. I’m really pleased with how I did,” said Ryan. “I’m definitely really happy, especially after not starting out the season that strong. I was able to finish a lot stronger.”
Just as impressive were the performances of Melanovsky and Robson, who filled in the fourth and fifth positions on the team – slots that became critical after the injuries to Botticelli and Iannacci. Lehane noted that Melanovsky was still able to finish fourth for the Terriers despite struggling through a bout of bursitis and a bad hip.
The Terriers’ performances also set them up for the indoor track and field season, which opens Dec. 3 at the New Balance meet in Boston. BU will be looking to fill the gap that Northeastern, which captured the America East indoor championship in each of the last three years, created when it departed for the Colonial Athletic Association this year.
“To finish the season strong, I think that’s what we needed to do,” said Laakso. “We have a lot of excitement right now, and hopefully that excitement will carry through into the indoor season.”
The men’s cross country team also competed in the NCAA regional meet, placing 14th in a field of 33 teams. Senior captain Mike Fisher paced the squad with a 62nd-place finish, clocking in at 31:51.1.
Fisher was followed by Jake Laroe at 70th overall, along with Dan Sieczkiewicz at 86th place. Nick Goodman and Greg Sinnot also scored for the Terriers, finishing in 102nd and 123rd places, respectively.
The men will also open their indoor season at the New Balance meet on Dec. 3.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
