DIII Nationals Day Two Recap: Distance

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Six races were won, and a seventh national champion was crowned on Saturday.  Men and women took titles in the 800, mile, and 3000, and Lucy Cheadle was named the women’s 5k winner after a labyrinthine series of protests.

Somewhat unusually for DIII, upsets ruled the day. The craziest one came in the men’s 3000.  Cross country champ and top 3k returner Grant Wintheiser of St. Olaf set a brutal pace, going through 800 meters in around 2:10 and not backing off by much until the final 700 or so.  He was visibly slowing, but it was not until the beginning of the bell lap that his previously stonily confident mien began to crack. As the bell rung, he looked back with an almost exaggerated twist of his neck.  He saw two familiar faces: Eau Claire’s Josh Thorson and his teammate Jake Campbell were closing the ten-meter gap rapidly.  With 100 meters to go, it seemed clear that Wintheiser was out of gas, and was going to be caught. But by who?

Thorson made the first move, and a smooth-looking Campbell quickly made sure that the title would be won by an Ole. Campbell blew by Wintheiser with 50 meters to go, which gave the latter just enough energy to hold off Thorson and lock down a 1-2 finish for St. Olaf.

In the immediate aftermath of the race, neither was quite sure what to make of what just happened:

Campbell was actually the second St. Olaf junior to win a national title on Saturday.  Miler Paul Escher absolutely destroyed the field with a huge move at 300 meters, beating everyone by nearly two full seconds in the last lap and a half.

His coach Phil Lundin told me way back in September that at a school like St. Olaf, “sometimes to my chagrin, kids might miss practice time to pursue their other passions.”  The Lundin-chagrinometer may or may not have been pretty high this past January when Escher studied abroad for a full month.  Escher came into this season and even this meet with scaled back ambitions, but now he’s a national champ:

MIT’s Maryann Gong came within a few tenths of becoming a distance legend and winning the Cazzolian triple of the mile, DMR, and 3k.  She was narrowly outkicked in the mile and DMR, but was incredibly sunny heading into the 3k.  That positivity paid off, as she knocked off a clearly exhausted Cheadle and Amy Regan to win the 3000 by over a second.  When Gong struck in the final lap, Cornell’s Abrah Masterson gamely tried to follow, but Gong’s speed was so much better than everyone else in the field that the outcome was never in doubt. The MIT sophomore likely relished the dawdling pace, as they went through the mile in around 5:20 and barely accelerated until the last kilometer.

Though Gong similarly struck first in the mile, her rival Allison Maxwell of Middlebury tracked her very closely and responded with an even bigger kick in the last 100 meters. As is often the fate of the very first person to make a move, Gong got swallowed up not only by Maxwell, but also upstart Hannah Chappell-Dick of Eastern Mennonite. Maxwell was 0-2 against Gong in miles this winter, but knew she had the speed to get it done at nationals:

That leaves us with the 800s.  Coming into the meet, Tufts’s Mitchell Black and Oshkosh’s Kylee Verhasselt were big favorites, but after two races that were polar opposites, only Black left with a title.

The men went through 400 meters in a pedestrian 57 seconds, with defending outdoor champ Andrew Carey of Johns Hopkins leading but looking around in bewilderment at the slow pace.  The race dawdled well into the third lap; the penultimate homestretch was spent jostling for pole position (trademark: Larry Rawson) and Black got to the end of the straight first.  Once he had his spot, the race was essentially over. Black put a full second on the field in the last 200 meters.

The women’s race went out nearly as fast as the men’s. SUNY Oneonta’s Rachael Shine took it out in 62 seconds, and had a two meter gap on the chase pack. Defending indoor champ Verhasselt closed the gap in the second half of the race, but was clearly straining to do so, and wasn’t alone.  Lebanon Valley’s Cynthia Adams followed her and eventually blew by to win in 2:08.81, marking her as the fifth fastest performer in DIII history.  

It was Adams’s final race of her career, and she was as emotional as you’d expect after getting the win:

You can find all of our interviews from DIII nationals here.