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Clarkson XC does Nationals

What a crazy weekend. Two weeks ago, we had no idea that we would be spending the last weekend before Thanksgiving somewhere other than Clarkson, let alone spending it in Wisconsin at the NCAA DIII National XC Championships. Coming off a career and program best placing at Regionals, Abbie Sullivan qualified for the big show as the top-ranked individual in the Atlantic region, and the top runner from the Liberty League Conference. It was a wild ride there in many ways, with three NCAA Champs rookies making the trip.
Marc Messer photo

After a warm-hearted and chilly-weathered send-off from the team, we faced logistical setback after setback en-route to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Our airport was about to get hit with a 10” snowstorm as we were supposed to depart, and our first flight was delayed to the point of us being automatically rebooked from our connection to a new flight Friday morning. We scrambled as soon as we could make contact to try and move rental cars around, preparing to make the 2.5-hour drive from Chicago to Oshkosh. As luck would have it, our connection was also delayed just enough for us to sprint through O'Hare terminal 3 and join the boarding line. Except we had already been rebooked. The standby passengers that got bumped from the flight were less than pleased, but hey, we made it. Then that flight spent 45 minutes on the deicing pad, pushing our arrival time back from 10pm to almost midnight. Oh yeah, and we were in a new time zone, so really it was more like 1am. We finally rolled into our hotel at around 12:30, 11 hours after we left Clarkson, and only 4 hours earlier than if we had just driven. *shrug*


We took the next morning to sleep off our travel hangover, rolling down to our hotel breakfast at around 930. From there we planned how are we going to kill the hours before we would be able to officially check in and run the course.

If you’ve ever been to Oshkosh (and you're not from WI), it was probably either for D3XC nationals or the Oshkosh Air Festival. Other than that, there's not a whole lot going on. So we moseyed on over to the EAA museum for a few hours, checking out planes and stuff before the coaches meeting.



Abbie went solo to the course after dropping me and Allott off downtown, and we quickly found our North Country neighbors SLU at the meeting. At least we could follow someone who’d been here before.

Later that night was the NCAA Awards banquet, where we managed to snag a table with other individual runners: one from our hotel (via UC Santa Cruz), and another we found out was sharing a start box with Abbie (via Suffolk). The dinner was good, there were awards, speeches, and lots of denim.


The next morning was a little different race morning than we were all used to. No team, no bus, no team tent, no parents. Just our small travel party, a rental car, our bags, and the short drive to the golf course. And boy was there a crowd for this one.



 I sometimes forget that XC fans are the most physically active fans in any sport.

Marc Messer photo

When the women started, we had no idea what to expect. Abbie had done well at regionals, mixing it up with a top-ranked team. We forgot that now there were 31 other teams that were all similar, plus another 50+ individuals. But it didn't matter, Clarkson was represented at nationals, and it was a great way to cap off the season.
Marc Messer photo

Abbie finished 121/279, ten seconds out of the top-100, twenty from top-75.

Our trip wound down with some nice meals around Oshkosh, and the flights back weren't nearly as eventful as the ones out. At least for us. I hope the Oberlin Women's team made their flights out of O'Hare.

There's so much more about this event that can't feasibly be written down, more than just a "You had to be there" type of story. The people we met, the things we saw, stuff that just can't be given justice written down.

You had to be there, and hopefully next year, I can tell you that again.
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Location: Oshkosh B'Gosh, WI

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