ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. --- The Elizabethtown College men's cross country team will compete at the NCAA Division III Championships at the Highland Hills Golf Course in suburban Cleveland on Saturday. The women's 6-kilometer race will begin at 11:00 a.m. followed by the men's 8-kilometer race at noon. The top 35 finishers in each race will be recognized as All-Americans.
In addition to the men's team, senior
Megan VanDenHengel will compete in the women's race after earning an at-large berth to the championship meet by way of her eighth-place finish at the Mideast Regionals.
The Blue Jay men are making their fifth appearance at nationals in the last 10 years, finishing as high as 14th in 2001. The squad also ran in 1999 (24th), 2002 (15th) and 2004 (15th) as a team, and entered individuals in 2000, 2003, 2005 and 2006.
Elizabethtown captured one of 16 at-large berths to the field of 32 teams on the strength of their fifth-place finish at the highly-competitive Mideast Regional meet at Lehigh University last Saturday.
Eric Reichert was the top Blue Jay runner with a fourth-place finish, and was joined as an All-Region honoree by
Evan DeArmitt who placed 23rd.
Joining Reichert and DeArmitt in the lineup will be
Chris Heisey,
Colby Miller,
Charlie Larsen,
Russell Speiden and the team's lone senior,
Myles Lund. Serving as alternate is
Aaron Focht.
The journey back to nationals for the Blue Jays started following the 2007 season, when the squad finished an uncharacteristic 13th overall at regionals. Prior to that, Elizabethtown had placed in the top five in seven straight years from 1999 through 2005 before slipping to sixth in 2006. Pat Donovan finished eighth in the region in 2006 and competed at nationals, but the team was shut out in 2007. The 2008 team bounced back strongly, finishing fifth at regionals, but just missed earning an at-large bid to NCAAs. Solid performances were turned in by Reichert (27th) and Heisey (41st) along with 2009 graduates
Jeremy Matula (45th) and Scott Derkacz (59th).
As far as the 2009 squad, its success can be traced to a series of three races in October. The Blue Jays finished fifth overall at the highly-competitive Inter-Regional Rumble at Oberlin College on Oct. 17, defeating nationally-ranked Johns Hopkins University and Ohio Northern University as well as five other regionally-ranked teams. From there, the Blue Jays won their home meet, the Battle for the Buggy, the following weekend and parlayed the momentum into a Middle Atlantic Conference team championship on Oct. 31 as five runners finished in the top 11.
VanDenHengel will be making her second trip to nationals, having been part of the 2007 squad that qualified as a team for the NCAA championships and tied for 23rd place out of 32 teams. VanDenHengel was the third Blue Jay to cross the finish line in that race, behind All-American Erin Fisher (whose 15th-place finish is the best ever by an Elizabethtown women's runner at nationals) and Tiffany Kulp (87th place, in her third of four trips to nationals).
She is the third different Blue Jay women's cross country runner to earn an individual berth in the NCAA championships, joining All-American Melissa St. Clair (2003) and Kulp (2005, 2008). Elizabethtown will have an entry in the women's race for the seventh consecutive year.