Women’s 5K winner Andria Scaglione ahead of the pack during the Marist Invitational. COURTESY / GOJASPERS
By Isaiah Rosario, Sports Editor
Manhattan College Cross Country opened its 2023 season at the Marist Invitational in Poughkeepsie, New York, at Vassar Farm.
The main headline of the race was graduate student Andria Scaglione who won the women’s 5K race with a time of 18:39.2. Scaglione’s time was six seconds ahead of the second-place runner.
The second Jasper to finish across the finish line was junior Kylie Conroy, as she finished in sixth place with a time of 19:03.0.
On the men’s side, the best runner of the race for the Jaspers was junior Jared Lautenslager who finished the 6K with a time of 19:08.7.
Director of Track and Field, Kerry Inman, spoke to GoJaspers, about her thoughts after the race and where they are headed in the future as they look ahead to the MAAC Championships.
“Today was all about seeing where we are as a team, seeing where our packs are,” Inman said. “We learned a few hard lessons today, but we also saw a lot of positives as well. This was a valuable step on the path to the MAAC Championships.”
Scaglione spoke to The Quadrangle about what she believed were the major factors that led to her success in the women’s 5K race.
“I feel in terms of a race strategy, I tried not to focus on competing,” Scaglione said. “I had no time goal in mind. I feel the week before that and even two weeks before that, we’ve been doing workouts and just focusing on cutting down within them. During the race, I use that strategy of trying to cut down, I want to go out a little more conservative. I want to go out assertive where I establish a position but then focus on settling in and then just get ready to kind of kick at the end. I feel it differed from my strategy in years past where I’ve kind of just gone out really hard to not really focus on the end as much and kind of try to hold on but in this race, I feel I really wanted to focus from start to finish having enough to close.”
While racing in a field with many other competitors there comes many challenges. Scaglione spoke about some of the challenges she faced during the race to come to her victory.
“I usually am not that confident in my ability to close, so I guess just mentally not getting nervous about anticipating the coming miles because I feel like in the past I’ve usually gotten nervous by the time it got to that last mile and not really had a response to kick,” Scaglione said. “In this race, I focused on making sure I was ready to have a response and I knew that when we hit a certain point people were going to start kicking so I guess just focusing on not getting too antsy at the beginning and being confident in my ability and the fact that, I could, just settle in in a pack and then be able to go with them rather than trying to take it out from the beginning.”
Conroy and Lautenslager both spoke on their mentality on motivation, going into this race as they both finished in sixth place in their respective races.
“I went out pretty confident, which haven’t really done in the past,” Conroy said. “I feel like I usually do go out a little bit conservative. So I guess like different from Andria. I kind of like putting myself in a position where I normally wouldn’t think I belong. The confidence I’ve been trying to work towards this whole summer and coming out of MAACs in the spring put me in a place where I felt uncomfortable, but obviously, it was difficult … and even though it was really hard the doubts and my thoughts, while I was racing definitely came up, just pushing them away and just like keep pushing myself to lead up to knowing I belong there,”
“I wanted to be a bit more conservative in this race because it was my first race in quite a while … I wanted to go out a little bit slower, and it’s kind of work through the pack and work up to the main pack, which I did,” Lautenslager said. “I just wasn’t able to stay in there for as long as I’d hoped. I’m hoping to kind of work on that in the coming race.”
The next race for the Jaspers is Jasper Fall XC Invite which is coming on Sep. 16.