HAVERFORD, Pa. – The men's cross country team posted an eighth-place finish at the 2009 NCAA championship — the 13th top-10 in program history and the fifth in the past six seasons —and in 2010 return all but one runner from that national race line-up giving rise to guarded optimism that the Fords might be able to challenge for a podium spot at November's national championship in Wartburg, Iowa.
Though Haverford was the highest-placing Centennial Conference team at both the NCAA regional and national championship races, the Fords finished second to Dickinson College at the 2009 conference meet. The battle for conference supremacy in 2010 will likely come down to the same two programs but the Scarlet and Black hope that their experienced roster of returners can turn the tables on the Red Devils.
The Centennial's preseason coaches' poll echoes those thoughts with the Fords garnering the top spot in the poll with 62 points and six first-place votes (voters not permitted to vote for their own team) while Dickinson registered 59 points and three first-place votes. Johns Hopkins (49 points), Gettysburg (40) and Muhlenberg (40) rounded out the top five in the preseason ratings.
A quartet of Haverford seniors rolled through the end of last season amongst the team's on-course leaders and Joseph Carpenter, Anders Hulleberg, Chris Southwick and Elias Tousley hope to make their last season with Haverford a memorable one. Juniors Eric Arnold, Tim Schoch and Andrew Sturner, along with sophomores Ivo Milic-Strkalj and Jordan Schilit return with another year of experience and training tucked under their belts giving the Fords, with the inclusion of the seniors, a solid core group to chase after conference, regional and national honors.
The season kicks off with the annual match-up against Villanova at the Haverford-hosted Main Line Invitational in mid-September. The following weekend will bring more Division I opponents as the Fords take part in the Brooks–Paul Short Run, one of the largest collegiate cross country races on the East Coast, at Lehigh University. Last season Haverford finished 30th of 42 D-I, -II and –III squads at Lehigh and ranked third-best among D-III programs at the meet.
After a weekend off Haverford heads to the Princeton Invitational where last year they placed fifth of 13 squads finishing ahead of Penn, Pitt and Boston College. Following a small, home race the next weekend the Fords will travel to Baltimore to see if their challenging schedule has prepared them to take on the Red Devils and the rest of the conference at the Centennial championship meet. The season closes out with the NCAA Regional at Slippery Rock College and then with the national championship meet in Iowa where the Fords hope to be among the nation's elite and possibly standing on one of the four steps of the national meet's podium.