A Veteran Squad Gets Ready for Heps

He finished second in the Pennsylvania state cross country championships by just three seconds in his senior year of high school. He has been on two second-place Ivy Heptagonal teams at Columbia, both of which came within ten points of a championship. To say that an Ivy title would mean a lot to senior Karl Dusen and the rest of the Columbia men's cross country team would be a vast understatement.

"This is my fourth year now and we've been through a lot as a team," Dusen said. "To come and win the Heps this year as a team would be the most significant achievement I've ever had playing sports."

After narrow defeats to Dartmouth and Brown the last two years, tomorrow at Van Cortlandt Park will be the last opportunity to win a Heptagonal Ivy Championship for three Columbia seniors who have, over the last four years, turned the Lions into Ivy contenders again. The women, meanwhile, will look to become the sixth different school since 1977 to win three consecutive Ivy crowns. But this year roles are reversed, as the men enter the meet as slight favorites and the women as slight underdogs.

"My expectations are [for us] to win," said first-year standout Greg Hughes. "We're going to go out and do everything we can to win and if we don't it would be quite a disappointment."

The women enter the race far above most of the field, but are underdogs to a Princeton team that finished a close second at the 2003 championships and defeated the Lions two weekends ago by a sizeable 64 point margin at the Pre-Nationals at Indiana State.

Friday's race, however, should be a much tighter competition than that gap reflects. The race will be much closer because Princeton, with individual favorite junior Cack Ferrell, has stronger front runners than Columbia but a weaker pack. Such a dynamic bodes well in larger meets, like Pre-Nationals and Nationals, where the Tigers beat the Light Blue last season. However, the Heptagonal boasts a smaller field and will be more like a head-to-head meet between the two favorites, which will put more emphasis on the finishes of the three through five runners than on an individual, like Ferrell, who can run away from the rest of the field.

The Lions get an extra boost from junior Caroline Bierbaum, who has battled low iron levels for much of the last year and did not run at Pre-Nationals but posted an impressive time at the Lafayette Invitational.

"Princeton's really good; we're the underdogs," Bierbaum said. "We're not confident that we're going to win, but we're confident that we can win if we give it our best shot."

The pack, usually the group of a team's third through seventh runners, has led the Columbia women to their last two championships. This year the Lions have relied on a pack led by junior Tenke Zoltani and senior Delilah DiCrescenzo more than ever.

"We have approximately five or six girls that can be our top runner on any given day," DiCrescenzo said. "We don't have necessarily a front runner, which works to our disadvantage sometimes, but in this race with a smaller field I think it will work to our advantage."

Unlike the women, the men have two clear front runners in seniors Karl Dusen and Gerry Groothuis. However it is a third senior, Will Boylan-Pett, who will try to set a fast pace through the first three miles for a youthful main pack that will likely determine whether or not the Lions bring home their first Ivy title since 1979.

"We're a lot deeper three through five and that is what, year-in and year-out, has won Heps," Boylan-Pett said. "We've had the strongest pack that our coach said he's ever had and I would assume we've had since 1979."

After posting the fastest times of any Ivy school at Pre-Nationals just two weekends ago, the men's team have made themselves favorites, but by the narrowest of margins Dartmouth finished just eight points and one place behind the Light Blue. Seven of those eight points are attributable to the 118th place finish of the fifth Columbia scorer, sophomore Mark Olivier, over the 125th place finish of Noah Kaufman, the fifth Big Green finisher. Olivier and Kaufman were separated by 2.6 seconds. That's how much time could decide whether Columbia brings home its second-ever Ivy League title or settles for its third second-place finish in as many years.

"It will be a tight race, but our guys believe they can win this," said Columbia head coach Willy Wood. "There's no group of guys I'd rather be sending to the line."

Dartmouth, winners of 13 of the last 20 Ivy crowns, is the only team that can match the Lions depth, but is by no means the only other team capable of winning. Yale, led by senior Lucas Meyer, and defending champion Brown, with senior Jeff Gaudette, have the top two individual runners in the field based on times from Pre-Nationals and both have a chance for the team title should Dartmouth and Columbia open the door even the slightest crack.

"It's been totally the year of the team," Dusen said. "All of our success can be attributed to our pack."

The packs will likely determine whether the Columbia men and women can accomplish the difficult task of sweeping the Ivy titles for the first time in school history. A third straight title for the women would be a noteworthy accomplishment, but for the three seniors who have come so close in the past it would be particularly satisfying to go out with the first Columbia men's title in twenty-five years.

"It's my last chance to win," Boylan-Pett said. "It's more of a now-or-never mentality, so no matter what I'm going to hurt as much as I can."