At home this past Saturday, the Amherst women’s cross country team hosted the 2015 Little Three Championship.
In this meet, the Jeffs competed against the other two members of the Little Three: Williams and Wesleyan. Amherst’s final score of 59 earned them second place out of the three schools.

Williams earned first place with a score of 15, meaning each runner in the top-five came from Williamstown. Wesleyan finished third with a score of 69.

“We were missing two of our top runners this week in Savanna (Gornisiewicz ’17) and Nicky (Roberts ’18),” Cara Lembo ’17 said. “The two are irreplaceable, since they are two of the best in the league, but I was confident the rest of the squad would step up, especially since we were facing our most bitter rivals in Williams and Wesleyan.”

The Jeffs placed two runners in the top-11 out of the field of 61: first-year Lizzie Lacy and senior captain Betsy Black.
Lacy finished with a time of 19:56, good for seventh overall at the meet, while Black recorded a time of 20:21 to secure 11th place. She improved her time from last year by a substantial 35 seconds.

The other three scoring runners for the purple and white all finished in the top-25. Junior Cat Lowdon recorded a time of 20:41, which earned her 19th place overall. This result was an eight-second improvement over her effort at the 2014 Little Three Championship.

Nicky Roberts ’18 took 20:48 to finish the race, giving her 22nd place. Rounding out the top five for the Jeffs was junior Lembo, who finished with a time of 20:48 in order to place in 23rd overall.

Three other Amherst runners also finished among the top-30 in the field: Veronica Rocco ’19, Tess Frenzel ’17 and senior captain Caroline Rose. They finished with times of 20:51, 20:52 and 21:09 respectively.

“We had a rough couple weeks when our team was plagued by sickness, but we are definitely coming back strong,” Lowdon said. “Some of the first-years have stepped up as major players and it’s great to run with them.”

For their next meet, the purple and white will travel to Middletown to race in the NESCAC Championship on Saturday, Oct. 31. They hope to improve upon the third place finish they managed at the meet last year. Looking even further forward, the Jeffs have two regular season meets in November as they prepare for the NCAA Division III Championships in Winneconne, Wisconsin on Saturday, Nov. 21.