2010 Season Review
Signature highlight: There is likely no other ‘best’ highlight than winning a national title and the Fords accomplished that feat in 2010, led by individual national champion and men’s Division III runner of the year Anders Hulleberg ’11. The senior strung together a trio of individual titles beginning with the Centennial Conference championship and followed by the Mideast Region crown. With Hulleberg leading the way, Haverford rolled to conference and regional titles before racing to the national crown in Iowa.
Awards:
- NCAA Division III individual national champion: Anders Hulleberg
- All-America honors: Eric Arnold, Lucas Fuentes, Anders Hulleberg, Jordan Schilit, Chris Southwick
Mideast Region champion: Hulleberg - All-Mideast Region: Arnold, Joseph Carpenter, Fuentes, Hulleberg, Schilit, Tim Schoch, Southwick
Centennial Conference champion: Hulleberg - All-Centennial Conference: Arnold (first-team), Carpenter (second-team), Fuentes (first-team), Hulleberg (first-team), Ivo Milic-Strkalj (second-team), Schilit (second-team), Schoch (first-team), Faraz Sohail (second-team), Southwick (first-team)
- Centennial Conference Academic Honor Roll: Arnold, Carpenter, Eric Chesterton, Matthew Cohen, Ben Cutilli, Patrick Haneman, Ethan Haswell, Kevin Hoffman, Hulleberg, Peter Kissin, Morgan Kist, John McNeilly, Milic-Strkalj, Zach Needell, Jacob Olshansky, Nick Reynolds, Michael Riccio, Schoch, Southwick, Andrew Sturner, Elias Tousley, Lucas Van Meter
- Centennial Conference Sportsmanship Team: Kist
Season notes: Haverford placed five runners on the all-America squad based on the national championship race results. The highest number of Fords to earn all-America status in a single season prior to 2010 was two … All seven Haverford runners that raced at the Mideast Region race earned all-region status … The Fords registered identical finishes at both the conference and regional championships taking first, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh-place at both events to capture the team titles … The Fords were the only D-III team in the field of 13 at the Princeton Cross Country Invite and were beaten by only Texas and Princeton … At the Brooks-Paul Short Run, 24th-place Haverford was the third D-III team in the final results finishing three spots behind Allegheny College and two behind St. Lawrence. Allegheny took 15th at the national meet while St. Lawrence finished third.
Looking ahead: The Fords dethroned the reigning champs – North Central (Ill.) College – to show how difficult it is to repeat as a national champion. Haverford will give it a go in 2011 with the return of a pair of all-American runners in Arnold and Schilit along with Schoch and Milic-Strkalj. A number of other returners have certainly been waiting in the wings behind the group of seniors that earned all-American status and the national title so the defense of Centennial and regional titles will fall upon strong legs that have seen what is necessary to climb to the top step of the national podium.
2010 Season Outlook
The men’s cross country team posted an eighth-place finish at the 2009 NCAA championship — the 13th top-10 in program history and the fifth in the past six seasons —and in 2010 return all but one runner from that national race line-up giving rise to guarded optimism that the Fords might be able to challenge for a podium spot at November’s national championship in Wartburg, Iowa.
Though Haverford was the highest-placing Centennial Conference team at both the NCAA regional and national championship races, the Fords finished second to Dickinson College at the 2009 conference meet. The battle for conference supremacy in 2010 will likely come down to the same two programs but the Scarlet and Black hope that their experienced roster of returners can turn the tables on the Red Devils.
The Centennial’s preseason coaches’ poll echoes those thoughts with the Fords garnering the top spot in the poll with 62 points and six first-place votes (voters not permitted to vote for their own team) while Dickinson registered 59 points and three first-place votes. Johns Hopkins (49 points), Gettysburg (40) and Muhlenberg (40) rounded out the top five in the preseason ratings.
A quartet of Haverford seniors rolled through the end of last season amongst the team’s on-course leaders and Joseph Carpenter, Anders Hulleberg, Chris Southwick and Elias Tousley hope to make their last season with Haverford a memorable one. Juniors Eric Arnold, Tim Schoch and Andrew Sturner, along with sophomores Ivo Milic-Strkalj and Jordan Schilit return with another year of experience and training tucked under their belts giving the Fords, with the inclusion of the seniors, a solid core group to chase after conference, regional and national honors.
The season kicks off with the annual match-up against Villanova at the Haverford-hosted Main Line Invitational in mid-September. The following weekend will bring more Division I opponents as the Fords take part in the Brooks–Paul Short Run, one of the largest collegiate cross country races on the East Coast, at Lehigh University. Last season Haverford finished 30th of 42 D-I, -II and –III squads at Lehigh and ranked third-best among D-III programs at the meet.
After a weekend off Haverford heads to the Princeton Invitational where last year they placed fifth of 13 squads finishing ahead of Penn, Pitt and Boston College. Following a small, home race the next weekend the Fords will travel to Baltimore to see if their challenging schedule has prepared them to take on the Red Devils and the rest of the conference at the Centennial championship meet. The season closes out with the NCAA Regional at Slippery Rock College and then with the national championship meet in Iowa where the Fords hope to be among the nation’s elite and possibly standing on one of the four steps of the national meet’s podium.