Cross country teams looking to stand on top step at conference meet

HAVERFORD, Pa. – The Haverford College men's and women's cross country teams take to the trails Saturday morning in hopes of bringing home some hardware from the 2011 Centennial Conference championships hosted by Dickinson College at Big Spring High School in Newville, Pa.

The men will be gunning for a second straight conference crown after using their Centennial victory in 2010 to catapult the team to the NCAA title.

A pair of All-American runners return for the men in senior Eric Arnold and junior Jordan Schilit. Seniors Tim Schoch and Andrew Sturner will likely joust with their all-American teammates for the lead Haverford spot Saturday. Juniors Peter Kissin and Ivo Milic-Strkalj, senior Faraz Sohail, and sophomores Brian Sokas and Chris Stadler also figure to join the fray for the five scoring positions.

An earmark of head coach Tom Donnelly's Fords all season has been a pack-running mentality. At Lehigh University's Paul Short Invitational, where Haverford finished 16th overall and was the highest-placing Division III team, the first five Fords across the finish were separated by 46 seconds. Two weeks later, at the Princeton Invite, the scoring five were only 30 seconds apart in a fifth-place finish.

Haverford, No. 2 in the latest United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) poll, will not be able to walk away with the title as No. 4 Dickinson and 23rd-ranked Johns Hopkins University will nip at the heels of the Scarlet and Black.

The Haverford women won the Centennial title three of the conference's first four years (1993, 1995, 1996) but haven't been back on the top step since then.

This year's squad, led by senior Emily Lipman who wore the individual conference crown in 2009, has high expectations after finishing in third place last year for the third time in a row.

Lipman will most likely lead head coach Fran Rizzo's pack, but the gap has been closing with the progress of several of Lipman's teammates. Sophomore Emily Scott has been a consistent second to Lipman's lead throughout the season, while junior Andrea Tocci has been within reach of Scott in all the big races.

After Lipman led the team across the finish at the Princeton meet, where the Fords were fifth, Scott, Tocci, sophomore Flora Berklein, senior Sharon Warner and juniors Sally Weathers and Sheera Rosenbaum all finished with 27 seconds of each other. The same six runners followed Lipman earlier in the season at the Paul Short Run, packed together approximately 60 seconds apart.

The Fords were ranked 29th in the latest USTFCCCA poll and will have to chase down a pair of ranked squads if they are to finally re-visit the top step of the podium. Johns Hopkins enters the Centennial championship at No. 10 nationally and host Dickinson sits at No. 20 in the poll.