CMS Men's Cross Country celebrating 2019 SCIAC title Words over the photo read Championship Memories Saturday. CMS Men's XC 2019 SCIAC Championship, CMS 31, Pomona-Pitzer 31 (CMS wins on tiebreaker)
Posted: Oct 03, 2020

Championship Memories Saturday: 2019 Men's Cross Country Wins SCIAC Title in Tiebreaker

2019 SCIAC Championship Links:
Meet Recap
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Highlights

One little quirk to competing in racing sports is that most of the time, the team championship lacks a final buzzer or a last out that cues a spontaneous celebration. However, the 2019 SCIAC Championship for the CMS men's cross country team was a memorable exception.

In a close race between two cross country rivals, some quick math of who finished where in the top five from each team often allows everyone to figure out the team winner pretty quickly before the official announcement takes place. Every now and then, though, the math doesn't provide all the answers. 

On the other side of the finish line at Pomona-Pitzer's Strehle Track last fall, the Stags confirmed their unofficial recounts with each other multiple times, and it became clear that both CMS and Pomona-Pitzer finished with the exact same score of 31 points. Tiebreakers in cross country are rather rare; regular season races don't necessarily have them, and even when there are tiebreakers, the rules on how to break them aren't always the same. Historically, sometimes it has gone to each team's sixth-place finisher, or sometimes instead of adding up the top five, you add up only the top three.

In this case, the SCIAC tie would be broken by comparing who finished higher between the two first-place finishers for each team, who was higher between the two second-place finishers, as well as the third-place, fourth-place and fifth-place finishers. Whoever won that head-to-head battle 3-2 would win the championship, but nobody in those first few minutes knew for sure who had the advantage, and it led to some anxious moments awaiting the official word. This was a championship that the Stags really wanted, after all.

CMS has had lots of success in SCIAC Championships over the years, winning 17 titles overall, including five straight from 2012-16. The previous two seasons, though, had seen the Stags finish third, not only ending behind archrival Pomona-Pitzer, but also Occidental. CMS bounced back both times for stronger finishes at the NCAA Regionals, ending in the top two to qualify for nationals (including oddly another tie for first with Pomona-Pitzer in 2018), but the SCIAC title was one that the program wanted back.

"Performing at SCIACs meant a lot to us," said current senior Will Kimball, "particularly in proving ourselves after a couple of mediocre SCIAC performances in the past couple of years. We had a chip on our shoulder going into it, and while we knew we were capable of it, we knew it would take everyone's best efforts to redeem ourselves."   

"We suffered a few disappointing finishes in my first two years," said current senior Stevie Steinberg, "and as strange as it sounds, SCIACs might be even bigger than regionals or nationals for us. It's our last whole-team meet of the season, and there's a special energy to a championship where anyone can contribute. Especially as we came to see ourselves over the season as national contenders, we knew we first had to get back to our program tradition of SCIAC Championship victories." 

CMS began the year optimistic that it could perform well on the national stage. Most of the top runners from the previous year were back, and senior Thomas D'Anieri, who was a top-100 finisher at nationals as a sophomore, was back after missing his junior season with an injury.

The optimism kept growing after strong early-season performances, including a meet at UC Riverside which Kimball highlighted.

"My favorite memory of last season was probably at the UC Riverside meet in mid-September," he said. "At this early point in the season our team knew we had some potential, but showing up at Riverside with everyone performing great and beating Pomona-Pitzer for the first time in a couple years (with everyone racing) proved to us how much we were capable of. That race shot us up in the national rankings and put us in the national discussion. The whole team just had such an excited energy moving on from that point, and like many of my teammates, I walked away with a new personal record from the race, which I am still very proud of."

The Stags finished an impressive fifth at Riverside out of 24 teams from all three divisions, with Pomona-Pitzer sixth. CMS then went on to win the team championship at both the CSU San Bernardino Coyote Challenge and The Master's Invitational as it geared up for the postseason.

The Stags knew the battle with the Sagehens at the SCIAC Championships would be a tight one. Both teams had strong contenders for the individual title (D'Anieri for the Stags, and Ethan Widlansky for Pomona-Pitzer), as well as a deep nucleus of strong runners who would be jockeying for position in the front pack.

Sure enough, other than a red uniform of Tucker Cargile of Redlands (who finished fourth) and an orange uniform of Caltech's Simon Ricci (17th), the top 20 runners were pretty much alternating between Pomona-Pitzer blue and CMS gold. That made it possible for runners to try to keep tabs on how the battle for the team title was shaping out while still on the course.

"It totally depends on where you are in the pack," said Kimball of the ability to "scoreboard watch" in the middle of a race. "In my case, hovering between 10th to 12th place, I could look forward when we got into open stretches to get a sense of how our top guys were stacked up, and it was clear that it would be a close battle up to the very end, which definitely motivated me to push harder. However, even when you know where everyone's top five are, it barely impacts how you race; it's your duty to beat the people around you, and you do everything you can to fulfill that."

Steinberg admits, not surprisingly as a Harvey Mudd student, to filling his mind with relevant data even before the race begins, which he then uses to calculate his strategy as things progress.

"I like to make approximate projections and profiles for everyone in the top 20 or so expected finishers before the gun goes off, and then I can refer back to those during the race to determine my strategy," he said. "I try to gauge whether I can stay in the spot I'm in or if I need to work up a group or two, based on the distance remaining and my earlier predictions."

But when it's a close race like the SCIAC Championship, he admits he'll reach a point where he'll clear his mind of the data and turn to the task at hand. 

"In a tight, competitive race, all that tends to go out the window with about five or ten minutes left," he said. "At that point, I tend to focus on staying relaxed and keeping consistent until I need to kick." 

As the runners entered the final push, it became clear that D'Anieri was on his way to a memorable individual championship for the Stags. It had been a long road back for the senior after suffering an injury at the 2018 Track and Field Championships, and his final push left him four seconds ahead of Widlansky for the biggest finish of his career, which would perhaps end up being surpassed when he came in third at the NCAA Division III Championships (the second-highest finish for a Stag in program history).  His teammates couldn't help but be impressed. 

"Thomas has had one of the strangest, most convoluted, most confusing, and most impressive trajectories of a great runner that I've ever seen," said Steinberg. "From setting school records as a sophomore, to tearing his Achilles at nationals that spring, to fourteen months of that injury being undiagnosed and him trying to run virtually tendon-less, to hours and hours of sweating on the stationary bike, to Olympic-level doctors, to races started but unfinished, and then to a SCIAC individual title and a top-3 placing at nationals. I'm a massive fan of sports, pro and amateur, but they are absolutely meaningless without the narratives and paths that connect seasons and teams. Despite all the twists and turns, he lived up to his enormous potential, and if anyone can't appreciate that story, they can't really hope to understand why we compete."

Kimball concurred after admiring all the hard work it took for D'Anieri to get back to his pre-injury form.

"Even in injury, Thomas works harder than most people will ever work in their lives," he said. "It had been frustrating for the team to see that despite all his efforts in the alt room, his return to running had been slow, so when he was finally able to return in full force, we were all extremely excited. Not only did Thomas end up overcoming his injury to win the individual SCIAC championship, he scored third individually at nationals. It was amazing for everybody to see his hard work pay off."

The individual title gave CMS the valuable low number '1' when adding up the team score, but Pomona-Pitzer followed with the second and third place finishers, with Cargile fourth for Redlands. Miles Christensen was the second Stag to cross in fifth, with Steinberg and Kyril Van Schendel coming in seventh and eighth, separated by just two-tenths of a second.

Dante Paszkeicz came in ninth as the fourth Sagehen to cross, which left each team with one more scorer to finish, and it was first-year Henry Pick who crossed the line in tenth. That was big for him on an individual level, as tenth place is the cut-off to earn first-team All-SCIAC honors. But it also proved to be the difference in the team title, as he finished a few seconds ahead of Daniel Rosen of the Sagehens in 11th, making the final score 31-31. It was the highest finish of Pick's young career, and it earned him a National Athlete of the Week honor from the US Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association, a rarity for someone who doesn't win a race. But the coaches association recognized the importance of his performance in determining the team title, as did his teammates.

"A big part of our team culture is the idea that any of us can be a leader: anyone can step up, anyone can set the tone, anyone can be the hero on any given Saturday," said Steinberg. "All season long, Henry stepped up and managed the stress of being a top guy on this championship-level team. With people like Henry, Daniel Krasemann, and a whole bunch of first-years that just missed the postseason cut, our program's future is bright."

When the races had wrapped up and the math had been double-checked, ad infinitum, there was still the matter of the team trophy. CMS had the advantage if it went to the sixth-place runner (Kimball in 12th) but Pomona-Pitzer had the advantage if it went to the top three finishers (11 points to 13). Everyone was a little bit anxious waiting for the crackling of the loudspeaker which would indicate the p.a. announcer was about to go live.

"As someone whose weak final kick cost the team a couple points, I had white knuckles every moment we were waiting," said Stevie Steinberg. "Miles Christensen came flying past me in the last straightaway to undo some of my damage, and that gave me some comfort. But once we tallied up the points and realized that we were tied with Pomona-Pitzer, we just crossed our fingers that we wouldn't lose a tiebreaker."

Finally the word came, and the tiebreaker and the championship went to CMS, the first league title for most of the runners on the team.

"That was an incredible feeling," said Kimball. "There was definitely some speculation that we pulled it off, but nobody wanted to prematurely celebrate. It's a weird thing to celebrate the win when you are still completely exhausted from racing, but all the guys were stoked. We regrouped and gave off one last chant as a whole team. Still, we knew there was more work to be done for nationals, and we also still wanted to make sure the Athenas won their race, too (they did, by a lot). Once both the men's and women's teams had won, it was time to celebrate."

"When they announced that we won, I almost shouted my lungs out," said Steinberg. "It felt like a Lakers buzzer-beater in Staples against the Celtics. I beelined over to Miles and probably crushed his lungs a little bit, hugging him in gratitude. The whole team then crammed into a group huddle, whooping and hugging and giving props to everyone who made the W happen. Even now, thinking about it makes me want to lace my shoes up and get some mileage in."

Now that a year has passed since the title, with a lot of unexpected curves in the road in the interim, Steinberg has grown to appreciate those moments even more.

"I'll never forget the moments where we're all unified," he said, "when we get started on a brutal workout at 6 a.m., when I look around the bus on the way to a meet, when we all go to Collins breakfast together, hungry and desperate for Denver Scramble. Two things stick with me. First, when a group of my teammates flew out to Louisville to cheer us on at nationals, and then sprinted around a freezing, muddy course for miles to give the team whatever they could. Second, the group hug we had after winning SCIACs. These days, when being together is so difficult, no memory feels better than that moment of coming together, as one."