THE PENDULUM

On a drizzling, overcast Saturday on South Campus, there was an eerie calm exerted by the women's cross country team. Despite huge crowds supporting every school participating in the Southern Conference Championships, the women were not fazed. They took the energy from the crowd and ran with it to a program-best second-place finish in the conference championship meet.

"It is really amazing to see how far this program has come," head coach Christine Engel said. "It is huge for both our program as a whole and our athletes, and we are all feeling really great about it right now."

In addition to placing second as a team out of 12 schools, the Phoenix ended the 5K race with numerous individual accolades.

Senior co-captain Caitlin Beeler led the Phoenix with a time of 18:54, while finishing seventh overall out of 100 runners. Beeler's performance led her to earn First Team All-Conference honors.

As a senior, Beeler said she was influenced by coaches, teammates and other supporters encouraging her to run her hardest in her last conference meet of her career.

"I tried to just run as hard as I could while making sure I gave every effort in one of my last races," Beeler said. "I didn't want to look back and regret anything from today."

Three other runners ended with all-conference accolades — junior co-captain Emily Fournier garnered Second Team All-Conference honors with a time of 18:58, for 10th place overall.  Rounding out the conference honors were freshmen Morgan Denecke and Sullivan Parkes, who were placed on the all-freshmen team, finishing 15 and 22, respectively.

These four runners were joined by Jaqueline Alnes, Allyson Costa, Lauren Fredrickson, Cab Rossi and Emily Tryon to help lead the Phoenix to its second-place finish in Engel's second year as head coach. The second-place honors were the highest finish the Phoenix has achieved since joining the SoCon.

"(Our results) speak highly about what coach Engel has done so far," Beeler said. "She believed in us, that it was possible. Being able to trust in our training and the support we had really paid off today."

The men's SoCon championship meet was also held Saturday at Elon's new cross country course.

The Phoenix placed fifth out of 11 teams.
Junior Matt Richardson finished 11 out of 87 runners with a time of 25:45, to earn Second Team All-Conference accolades. With his finish, Richardson became the first Elon men's runner to be chosen for an All-SoCon team, and the first runner since 1996, when Elon was a part of the South Atlantic Conference, to be named to any conference team.

Junior Justin Gianni and sophomore Will Schefer both had top-25 finishes for the Phoenix, while freshman Conner Mercurio and sophomore Clay Sankey all earned top-50 times.

"We talked about this being our home environment, and we know it better than anyone else," Engel said. "Both teams went out and performed, and I couldn't be happier for our finish as a program today."

Both races started at South Campus fields, wound around the development behind the club fields, went around the lake and finished right where it started at South Campus fields.

"It was so helpful being able to train on our own course and then run on it during two meets this year," Beeler said. "The experience on this course helped us post our low times today."

The top seven runners on both the men's and women's side will look to continue their recent successes at the NCAA regional tournament Nov. 14 in Louisville, Ky.