CROSS COUNTRY: Chenoweth and Richardson Lead Crimson on Trails

In spite of numerous injuries that marred their rosters, the Harvard men’s and women’s cross country teams enjoyed a successful 2010 season. Both rookie and veteran members of the squads saw improvement as the season progressed, and many Crimson runners posted personal-best times over the course of the year.

“Both of our teams performed very well,” Harvard coach Jason Saretsky said. “We had some things go our way, and, of course, some things that didn’t exactly go our way.”

One such misfortune for the men’s team occurred early in the season when members of the team sustained injuries that kept them out of competition. In particular, injured sophomores Jeremy Gilmour and Sean Pohorence were expected to be scoring runners for the Crimson.

In their absence, a group of first-years—Maksim Korolev, Kurt Ruegg, and Aaron Watanabe—rose to the occasion.

“Given how young [these runners] were, the success that they had was really exciting,” Saretsky said.

“They saw a lot of growth over the course of the season,” men’s captain Dan Chenoweth added. “Those guys really made an impact.”

Chenoweth made quite an impact of his own. For the third consecutive season, the Geneseo, Ill., native qualified for the NCAA Championships. Although he missed out on All-America honors, Chenoweth was named to the All-Region in the Northeast.

In one of his best performances of the year, Chenoweth captured a victory at the Harvard-Yale dual meet, finishing the 8k race in 25:10.7. Later in the season, the senior went on to capture second place in the Heptagonal Championship Invitational with a time of 24:14.0.

But Chenoweth wasn’t the only Crimson runner who garnered attention within the collegiate cross country world.

On the women’s side, senior Claire Richardson ran her personal-best time of 17:20.13 in the 5k at a Yale invitational early in the season, which was good for second place overall.

“[Richardson] demonstrated that she could be one of the top distance runners in the country,” Saretsky said. “She competed very well for us.”

Richardson’s performance was part of a streak of strong outings that the Harvard women’s squad put together to earn itself a No. 63 national ranking.

“The highlight of the season was the Pre-Nationals meet in Terre Haute,” women’s captain Eliza Ives said. “We did really well and put ourselves on the national spectrum.”

At the Pre-Nationals meet, the women’s team placed 16th out of 40 competing teams. The Crimson finished ahead of a nationally-ranked University of Florida team and expected to carry its momentum through the season’s final stretch.

But its progress was halted by a string of injuries to key runners.

“Towards the end, with injuries, our performance took a hit,” Ives said. “We definitely had the strength to have a really awesome end of the season, and that just didn’t happen.”

Still, Ives said she was proud of the season that she and her teammates were able to put together.

The senior is a member of Saretsky’s first class of recruits at Harvard, and she has noticed positive changes in the cross country program with him at the helm.

“He basically took a program that was struggling and wasn’t the best in recruiting and turned that around,” Ives said. “The fact that we were nationally recognized my senior year is something that I’m sure he couldn’t have dreamed of.”

Saretsky hopes that the program will keep making strides next season, and with Korolev, Ruegg, and Wanatabe all returning, he is optimistic for the road ahead.

“Our goal is to continue to progress,” Saretsky said. “Both of the teams have a lot of talent, so it should be a really exciting season for us.”

—Staff writer Dominic Martinez can be reached at dmartinez@college.harvard.edu.