Ward Sutlive, Campus Carrier asst. sports editor
Berry College’s women’s cross country team came in first and second place at the Berry Equal Distance Meet. Senior Ariel Ellis came in first place with a time of 31:32, while Freshman Ella Williams came in second place with a time of 32:10. According to Paul Deaton, head coach of the women’s cross-country team, team morale is extremely high at the moment, with everyone said to be in good spirits.
“A lot of people ran well that day and enjoyed each other’s success,” Deaton said. “And of course, [they] enjoyed the team win.”
The team ran an 8K course, which is 4.97 miles in four 2k loops. This is longer than what the runners normally run. At most races, the team runs a 6k, which is 3.1 miles.
Deaton appreciated the structure because it allowed him and his runners to compare each 2K split and see if they could improve. Williams thought the course was simple enough to run and ran into no unexpected difficulties.
“I would say it was pretty mild,” Williams said. “It was a 2K loop that we did four times to reach the 8K distance. And it wasn’t too hilly or rocky. It was mostly grass.”
Ellis and Williams used different strategies to achieve their victories. Ellis started off the race running very quickly before settling into a pace that she knew she could maintain. In the final lap, she started increasing her speed the closer she got to the finish line. Under the instructions of Coach Deaton, Williams employed a different technique. She started the race off slow and would pick up speed as it went on.
“I would say that my strategy was starting off slower and then getting faster and faster as the race went on,” Williams said.
Neither Williams and Ellis are strangers to running. Ellis has been running with the team for about a year and a half, while Williams is a transfer student from Hendrix College, and was a member of its cross-country team. According to Ellis, this is a big difference from last season for her, since a lot of her friends have left, and half of the team is made up of new people. Nevertheless, she has enjoyed the support and positivity that she has received from her teammates and has found it very helpful. Williams raced against Berry’s team back when she was running with Hendrix College and is familiar with the team dynamics. Despite coming from a rival school, Williams has a good relationship with her teammates, who are very supportive of her.
“They’ve encouraged me a lot to keep doing what I love,” Williams said. “And everyone’s super supportive with us trying to build up mileage and get better throughout the season.”
Ellis and Williams both have a lot to offer to their team, according to Deaton. Ellis’s greatest strength is that she’s a distance runner, which means that she has a lot of endurance. Williams’s best skill is that she is very measured and calculated with her efforts.
“[Ella’s] confident,” Deaton said. “[She] has good strength, [and] has good speed. She’s got a lot to work with.”
While the course was simple enough, there were some difficult parts. For Williams, it was the final stretch of the race, but she was trying to achieve a strong and fast finish. For Ellis, it was the middle portion because that is when a runner’s body really begins to feel the strain.
“Definitely the middle [was the most difficult],” Ellis said. “Because that’s when things really start to hurt and the pain starts to set in, but you also have a long way to go.”
Despite some slight hardships in the race, there were also portions that both Ellis and Williams found easy. Ellis considered the last lap to be easy, since she knew she was almost done. For Williams, the easiest part of the meet was the first lap, and things just got harder from there.
Ellis will be graduating at the end of the year and has plans to continue running in her post-college life. As someone who has been running since she was nine years old, and has a special love for long distance running, she wants to keep working at it. She plans to run in the Abbot World Marathon Majors, which goes through a variety of different locations such as Boston and Chicago.
The team’s next meet will be on Sept. 20th in South Carolina, at the end of the Division Three Pre-National Meet. According to Deaton, this is one of the most competitive meets that the team goes to, as teams from all over the country will be there.
“Everything’s still new and fresh for this season,” Deaton said. “I’m looking forward to each step of the process and each success that we might hope for. I’m very excited about the season.”