Women's HEPS Preview: Abbey D, then who? Is Real Ivy Green?

Oct 29, 2013 by Jonathan Gault

Abbey D'Agostino has won almost every medal available to an Ivy League distance runner. She has an individual HEPS cross country title and HEPS track championships in the 1500, mile, 3000 and 5000. She was even part of Dartmouth's 4x800 relay that took second at outdoor HEPS in 2012.

But one piece of hardware that has so far eluded her is a team cross country medal. Dartmouth finished 7th and 5th in D'Agostino's freshman and sophomore years and was 7th last year with D'Agostino sidelined due to injury.

2013 could be the year that D'Agostino completes her trophy case. No. 11 Dartmouth has been the best team in the league this year and enters HEPS as the favorites to claim its first conference title since 1997. To do that, the Big Green must get by No. 23 Princeton and No. 24 Cornell, who between them have won the past seven HEPS championships.

Here's what to watch when the race goes off on Saturday at Princeton's West Windsor Fields:

Women’s Individual: Abbey D, Then Who?

Nothing is certain in life, but barring a catastrophic injury or illness, Dartmouth’s Abbey D’Agostino will be your 2013 HEPS champion. Since her 3rd-place finish at NCAAs in 2011, D’Agostino has lost precisely one cross country race – 2012 NCAAs, where she finished 0.7 seconds out of first after not running for most of October due to injury. This year, she followed up an outstanding track season in which she claimed three NCAA titles (two indoor, one outdoor) with commanding victories at Paul Short and Wisconsin, the latter in a course-record 19:31.

Columbia’s Waverly Neer is a good bet for second, as she was the next Ivy finisher behind D’Agostino at both Paul Short (3rd) and Wisconsin (14th). It will be close behind Neer, though, as Princeton’s Megan Curham (12th at Notre Dame, 15th at Pre-Nats), Cornell’s Rachel Sorna (5th at Paul Short, 27th at Pre-Nats) and Dartmouth’s Dana Giordano (9th at Paul Short, 29th at Wisconsin) have all run well this year.

Women’s Team: Real Ivy Is Green?

After finishing as the top Ivy team at both Paul Short (2nd) and Wisconsin (7th), Dartmouth will be favored to win its first HEPS XC title in 16 years. However, HEPS has been a house of horrors for the Big Green in recent years as the team hasn’t finished in the top four since 2004. Last year’s 7th-place finish was particularly rough, as four of the team’s top six runners from Paul Short that year (including D’Agostino) did not run due to injury. But now, in coach Mark Coogan’s fourth year, Dartmouth seems poised to conquer the HEPS.

Logically, this makes sense. D’Agostino burst onto the national scene as a freshman. Now that she’s a senior, Coogan has a team full of runners who were drawn to Dartmouth by D’Agostino’s success. But that’s not why the Big Green has been so good. Giordano was a blue-chip recruit coming out of high school (3rd in the 2 mile at outdoor nationals), but the other members of Dartmouth’s top five – juniors Sarah DeLozier and Alison Lanois and senior Hannah Rowe – all committed to the Big Green before D’Agostino’s run of success. Rather, it is the progress of the Big Green’s non-D’Agostino runners – and not a sudden influx of stud recruits – that has allowed Dartmouth to be successful this season.

Behind Dartmouth, the top contenders on the women’s side are No. 23 Princeton and No. 24 Cornell. Princeton hasn’t raced most of the other Ivies yet, so it’s hard to make a direct comparison. The Tigers were 5th at Notre Dame and 10th at Pre-Nats, while the Big Red was 4th at Paul Short and 15th at Wisconsin. Here are some of their common opponents from those races (with the caveat that Pre-Nats and Wisconsin point margins are inflated due to larger fields):

Team	Result vs. Cornell	Result vs. Princeton
San Francisco	Beat by 138 (Wisconsin)	Beat by 105 (Notre Dame)
BYU	Lost by 140 (Wisconsin)	Beat by 14 (Notre Dame)
Notre Dame	Beat by 65 (Wisconsin)	Lost by 4 (Notre Dame)
Penn State	Lost by 164 (Paul Short)	Lost by 64 (Pre-Nats)

Nothing in that table screams that one team is stronger than the other. Sorna and Curham will cancel each other out, and each team’s 3-4-5 is pretty comparable. The only real difference is at No. 2. Cornell’s Emily Shearer was second at HEPS last year, while Princeton’s Emily de La Bruyere was just 27th, and Shearer’s 36th at Wisconsin was better than de La Bruyere’s 49th at Pre-Nats given that the Wisconsin field was stronger than Pre-Nats.

If Shearer can finish in the top five, she’ll give Cornell the inside track for second. It’s also possible that Harvard and Columbia could threaten for top three, as Columbia was just one spot behind Cornell at Paul Short and Harvard was just three spots behind Cornell at Wisconsin.

From a team perspective, this figures to be one of the most intriguing women’s races in a while. Apart from the snowstorm race in 2011, most recent HEPS have not been close on the women’s side. Cornell went 1-2-3 last year and Princeton has won five straight from 2006-2010, posting a perfect score of 15 in 2009.

Dartmouth is certainly the favorite, but an upset win by Cornell or Princeton is more likely than a Big Green blowout (win by 40+ points). D’Agostino’s low score also won’t help them as much here as it did at Wisconsin because of the smaller field. But if all goes according to form, she will add the one HEPS medal that she currently lacks – a team championship.

Note: These projections are independent of the analysis above. However, unlike the men's projections, our numbers for the women's individual and team race align with Jon Gault's excellent insight. The following places and scores are mainly based on each team's performance from either Wisconsin or Pre-Nats.

Individual Projections

Team Projections

Place  Name                School
1      Abbey D'Agostino    Dartmouth
2      Waverly Neer        Columbia
3      Megan Curham        Princeton
4      Rachel Sorna        Cornell
5      Dana Giordano       Dartmouth
6      Emily Shearer       Cornell
7      Sarah Delozier      Dartmouth
8      Emily de La Bruyere Princeton
9      Morgan Kelly        Harvard
10     Viviana Hanley      Harvard
11     Alison Lanois       Dartmouth
12     Heidi Caldwell      Brown
13     Lily Harrington     Brown
14     Molly Higgins       Princeton
15     Hannah Rowe         Dartmouth
16     Kathryn Fluehr      Princeton
17     Emily Reese         Harvard
18     Olivia Sadler       Columbia
19     Devin McMahon       Cornell
20     Elizabeth Bird      Princeton
21     Claire Devoe        Cornell
22     Selena Pasadyn      Harvard
23     Kristen Niedrach    Cornell
24     Elyssa Gensib       Penn
25     Clare Gallagher     Princeton
26     Cleo Whiting        Penn
27     Kira Garry          Yale
28     Chelsea Carrick     Columbia
29     Madeleine Ankhelyi  Harvard
30     Elizabeth Simpson   Cornell
31     Madison Holleran    Penn
32     Kathryn Little      Princeton
33     Liana Epstein       Yale
34     Bridget End         Dartmouth
35     Clarissa Whiting    Penn
36     Danika Simonson     Columbia
37     Leah Eickhoff       Brown
38     Leila Mantilla      Columbia
39     Sarah Gillespie     Harvard
40     Marianne Collard    Cornell
41     Caroline Williams   Columbia
42     Sarah Bennett       Dartmouth
43     Alexandra Conway    Brown
44     Aryn Foland         Columbia
45     Dale Kinney         Cornell
46     Lucy Van Kleunen    Brown
47     Hannah Alpert       Yale
48     Meredith Rizzo      Yale
49     Emily Stark         Yale
50     Ashley Montgomery   Penn
51     Anna Demaree        Yale
52     Charlotte Walmsley  Brown
53     Caroline Marshall   Harvard
54     Chandler Olson      Yale
55     Gabby Cuccia        Penn
56     Bori Tozser         Cornell
57     Sophie Mateu        Brown
58     Emily Quinn         Penn
59     Elizabeth McDonald  Yale
60     Erika Veidis        Harvard

Place School     Points
1     Dartmouth  39
2     Princeton  61
3     Cornell    73
4     Harvard    87
5     Columbia   122
6     Brown      151
7     Penn       166
8     Yale       204