Ravenna Neville '10 & Liz Wheatley '09 Compete at Nationals After Placing 5th & 11th in New England
Ravenna Neville '10 (left in photo) placed fifth of 330 runners at the New England Division III Championship hosted by Williams Sat., Nov. 15 to earn a spot in the NCAA Division III Championship. Joining her was Liz Wheatley '09 (right in photo), who placed 11th in New England. Both Neville and Wheatley earned all-New England Division III recognition and made their first trip to Nationals. The NCAA Championship was held at Hanover College in Indiana Sat., Nov. 22.
At Nationals, Neville turned in a time of 22:02.92 for 6k to place 52nd of 279 runners, placing her in the top 20 percent of the elite field. Wheatley, who ran right with Neville through the first 5000 meters, ended up 101st with a solid time of 22:30.10. That put Wheatley among the top 40 percent of the best Division III competitors. Middlebury captured the team title, giving NESCAC its third straight national crown and eighth in the last nine years. NESCAC and New England Division III champ Elise Tropiano of Amherst was the top finisher among NESCAC runners, placing second.
Wheatley also was one of four Cardinal runners to be recognized as a USTFCCCA national scholar-athlete. She was the lone woman while on the men's side, Jonah Blumstein '09, Matt Katz '11 and Justin Spring '10 received the honor. Wesleyan's men's team, with a combined GPA of 3.43, and the women's team, with a collective 3.50 GPA, both earned USTFCCCA scholar team laurels.
At New Englands, Neville covered the 6k course in a time of 23:02.6 as NESCAC runners dominated the event by claiming 16 of the first 18 finishers as well as nine of the top 11 teams. Wheatley's time was 23:10.7. Running away with the title was Tropiano with a winning margin of 39 seconds.
As a team at New Englands, Wesleyan's women placed 10th of 49 squads. Neville and Wheatley qualified automatically for NCAAs as individuals. The top seven runners not among the qualifying teams receive automatic berths. Champion Middlebury, which has three top-10 finishers, and runner-up Williams, which had the number-two finisher, qualified automatically as teams. Three more teams (MIT, Colby and Amherst) were chosen at-large for the NCAA field from New England.
On the men's side of the New Englands, Wesleyan placed 15th of 49 teams led by Charles Lang '11 in 63rd place with a time of 27:36.2 for 8k. Right behind in 69th place with a time of 27:49.6 was Katz. The team's top four runners finished within 20 seconds of each other in the field of 331 entrants.
NESCAC also controlled the men's race as Williams had three of the top five runners and won the event with more than an 80-point cushion over Amherst. NESCAC had five of the top six teams and nine of the top 15. Individually, the top eight finishers were from NESCAC colleges and the NESCAC had 14 of the first 19 runners to hit the finish line.
