To a man, members of the Kenyon College cross country team would be among the first to say it’s taken longer for the program to arrive at this point in its development than any of them ever imagined or even care to think about.
Fresh off the entire 2020 season being wiped out by the lingering impact COVID-19, the Lords are set to kick off the upcoming season with 12 returning members from a 2019 team seemingly well on its way to making its mark.
Leading the pack of returning letter-winners are seniors Jeremy Baier, Daniel Lane, Will Spohn and Ben Stillions. Back in 2019, Baier and Lane proved to be as impactful for the Lords as anyone on the roster, with the pair scoring points in multiple meets. Lane capped his season by breaking through at the North Coast Athletic Conference Championship (NCAC), where he placed 47th overall to spark Kenyon to a sixth-place team finish.
The roster also features five juniors that are returning, paced by the dynamic duo of Michael Deal and Jack Burczak, considered by some to be the team’s top two returners. Deal had top-five team finishes in five of the Lord’s nine meets, including top-three team finishes in a pair of meets.
Lane, meanwhile, saved his best for last, edging out Deal at the NCAC Championship in bagging the final points the team would register. Burczak also starred at the NCAC Championships, finishing 32nd overall and 207th at the NCAA Great Lakes Regional.
Even with all of that experience, the Lords know there will be adjustments this season with Coach Ciara Kissane in her first year at the helm. Kissane, who took over the program in the summer of 2020, is poised to lead the Lords into a full slate of competition for the first time beginning Sept. 3 with a home tri-meet.
Kissane is also hard at work in steering the Ladies’ team back to the days of reaching the lofty standards they’ve long set for themselves.
A runner-up NCAC finish in 2019 and back-to-back third-place showings beginning in 2017 aside, it’s been well over a decade now (2008) since the team has been able to lay claim to a conference total outright.
Any hope of that this season begins and ends with senior Emma Becker, who reigned in 2019 as the individual conference champion with a time of 21:59.5. Becker capped her season to remember by earning All-Region honors and qualifying for the NCAA Division III Championship, where she earned All-America status by placing 32nd overall from among a field of 277 runners.
Joining Becker as a key cog in the Ladies’ drive for a conference title is junior Alice Riley, who placed 32nd at the 2019 NCAC Championship in registering the team’s final points of the tournament. On the season, Riley earned points in all eight of the races she laced up for.
The junior duo of Ella Wilson and Anna Harnsberger are also being counted on to ease the loss of the senior trio of Grace Moses, Chloe Hall and Eleanor Tetreault. Hall had two scoring runs in 2019 and typically ended up as the sixth Kenyon runner to cross the line. Before going down with a season-ending injury that cost her the tail end of the year, Harnsberger managed a sixth-place and two seventh-place showings.
Kissane has her fingers crossed that a litany of recent additions will prove to pay instant dividends. Since 2019, seven runners have joined the program and are still being put through the paces leading up to the Ladies’ Sept. 3 season-opening tri-meet in Gambier.
The Ladies travel to Springfield on Sept. 11 to compete in the NCAC Preview Meet. From there, it’s stops at Muskingum University and at the Jennastrong Fall Classic in early October before the team returns home on Oct. 30 to host the NCAC Championships.
