By Dwayne Dahlbeck

Before Friday’s 36th Albany Invitational, cross country coordinator Richard Hart said he thought it would be a good preview of next week’s America East Championship. Apparently no one told that to the other teams in the America East.

In a meet that featured only one other conference foe, the Northeastern cross country teams showed their competitive fires once again as they prepare to host the America East Championships at Franklin Park this week. The men’s team, led by junior John Litchfield, finished 11th in a field of 22 teams with a score of 335. The women, led by sophomore Amber Cullen, pulled out a fifth-place finish in their own field of 19 teams.

Coming off a strong finish in the New England’s, the women’s team was able to capture some of that momentum, although none of the team’s top five runners were able to duplicate their performances from a week ago. Cullen finished 11th overall at 19:01 and was followed by Meaghan Shaw, who finished 14th despite being only a second behind at 19:02. Amy Hicks (19:29), Lindsay Harris (19:56), and Emily Watson (19:58) rounded out the scoring for the Huskies. Middlebury won the event with a score of 18, on the strength of four of the top five individual performances. Conference foe Albany finished tied for third with 94 points.

After the meet, Hart was impressed with the improvement the team continues to show.

“We really ran well,” he said. “Cullen and Shaw finished with awards for finishing in the top fifteen, and that’s against a quality field, so I’m very pleased. We didn’t have our best meet and we still finished fifth, so that shows the improvements we’ve made this season.”

The men could not work their way into the top ten for the second straight week, finishing with a score of 335. The Huskies were led by Litchfield, who finished 49th in 27:26. He was followed by teammates Jim Richard (60th, 27:34), Tom Pratt (67th, 27:44), Terry Dougherty (28:17), and Pat Stevenson (28:42).

After the meet, Litchfield said the team was looking for more.

“I think we’re a little disappointed, we thought we could finish higher than that,” he said.

He went on to comment on his own performance saying, “I think I ran well despite the time. A lot of people, not just from our team, were slower than a week ago [at the New England’s].”

Hart was also impressed by Litchfield, “John has not run a bad race all season, he’s been one of our top finishers all year, and he’s just had a great year.”

The team finished 247 points behind front runners Marist, who were strong enough as a team to win despite having only one individual in the top five and 59 points behind America East rival Albany, who finished in second place.

Both the men’s and women’s teams will be back in action November 2 as they host the America East Championships at Franklin Park on Saturday. The men’s race is at 2:15 p.m. and the women get under way at 3:00 p.m. Look for the Huskies to be among the teams chasing powerhouses UNH and BU, according to Litchfield.

Hart also thought his teams could be competitive. “If the guys all have a good day, they could do all right. The women have an opportunity to put an exclamation point on the best season we have had here in many years.

“Other years, we’ve gone in to the championships just looking to beat some teams; this year we’re going in with the expectation that we will beat some teams and we can try to knock off some teams we haven’t beaten in many years,” he said.

After the AE Championship, the Huskies look ahead to the NCAA Region I qualifier on Nov. 16.