Season Outlook
The Haverford College men’s cross country team enters the 2009 season with annual goals virtually unchanged from their perennial standards — compete for the Centennial Conference title, finish among the leaders at the NCAA Regional meet, and make an annual pilgrimage to the NCAA Championship, something they’ve done for 16 consecutive years and 26 times since their first appearance in 1978.
From the top mix of eight runners on the 2008 squad the Fords lost four to graduation but return the other half including two of their top three finishers from the NCAA meet.
Even more encouraging is that within the group of returners only one, co-captain Andrew Lanham, is a senior. Juniors Chris Southwick (the top Ford at the NCAA meet) and Elias Tousley (third for Haverford) along with sophomore Tim Schoch (fifth) are on pace to follow the path of progression so many others have tread within the culture of the upperclass-dominated program. Junior co-captain Anders Hulleberg is also expected to take the next step up this cultural ladder.
These five give the Fords a solid core to build around in 2009 but there will certainly be challenges within the order of finish from the largest roster—41 runners—the program has ever fielded under head coach Tom Donnelly who enters his 35th season as the team’s mentor and leader. In fact, in early-October when the Fords hit the trails at the Lehigh-hosted Brooks-Paul Short Run, one of the largest meets on the East Coast and one that this year includes six ranked Division I teams, the white Haverford singlet will be the most prominent uniform on the race course.
Prior to the Paul Short race the Fords will open the season at home on Haverford’s Alumni Course in the annual Main Line Invitational battle with just-up-the-road Villanova. Next on the slate, in their final tune-up for the conference meet, the squad will travel to Princeton for more Division I-heavy competition. This troika of races against scholarship programs will season the Fords for the closing portion of the schedule—the Centennial championship meet, the NCAA Regional, and then the NCAA championship meet—which is all against D-III competition.
Within the Centennial, Haverford was picked to finish second in the preseason coaches’ poll trailing 2008 champion Dickinson College but voted ahead of Johns Hopkins, the preseason third place pick. The U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Mideast Regional preseason poll has Haverford exactly where they finished last season, No. 4, when they earned a bid to the national meet. In the USTFCCCA national poll, the Fords enter the season in the No. 24 spot.