Although unusual this early in the cross country season, this past weekends Allegheny Classic in Meadville, Pennsylvania, featured four women’s cross country teams all holding the talent to be nationally ranked for Division III, Waynesburg University being one of them.

The Yellow Jackets finished third in the three-mile race, with 107 points, beating Allegheny College, though edged out by Case Western Reserve University, which finished second, and first place finisher Carnegie Mellon University. Eleven teams in total competed in the meet, with three rival schools from the Presidents Athletic Conference also running the course.

“Out of the four teams that were ranked, we placed third,” said head coach Chris Hardie. “I think that’s pretty good, knowing that we beat a team that two weeks ago was in the national top 30.”

Angie Marchetti, a senior captain for the women, finished in 10th place with a time of 18:48, while junior Teghan Simonton finished closely behind in 12th in 19:01. Rounding out the last three scoring spots for the Yellow Jackets were Malarie Yoder in 25th, Julie Gerber in 29th and Elinore Loch in 31st to secure the team’s bronze medal.

Knowing the competition of Allegheny, Hardie was impressed with the team, having beat Allegheny by 16 points – however, what left a larger impression on him and the coaches were how good the other two nationally ranked schools were.

“They really dominated the field,” said Hardie. “We were just standing there watching and they have to make nationals, Carnegie Mellon put four girls up with [Marchetti], our top girl, and then Case Western just had girl after girl come in sub-6:30 pace.”

Hardie was pleased with the fact that, despite going to a meet with a few powerhouse teams with large names, confidence wasn’t an issue at all.

In fact, a real strong suit for the women’s team that has been accidently built in to the program is the ability for a different runner to step up each meet, if need be.

“People that followed the team last year did know there was pretty much a set order in how people finished,” said Hardie. “This year… not only in our top six are we seeing a lot of switching, but we’re also seeing that seven to 15 [spots] where [that’s] the most competiveness spots on the team.”

Simonton, who again finished second on the team for the Yellow Jackets, agreed the competition is a good thing and that the depth the team has is remarkable.

“While we have some friendly completion happening, it’s always nice to know that if I’m having a bad day that [Yoder] will step up,” said Simonton. “When Julie is having a bad day, Angie will step it up. We all work together, we’re not the same times by any stretch of the imagination but we are in the same ballpark, so we all know that if someone is hurting that the others can pick it up.”

For Simonton personally, it was important to be back out on the course with her team and to get back into the racing mindset.

“I missed the last meet,” said Simonton. “So I hadn’t raced in two weeks, and that’s kind of odd for this point of the season. I didn’t want to put too much pressure on it because for me, I’ve only raced one meet so I wasn’t expecting to do fantastic or amazing. And also I had an injury, so I just wanted to hit the times I was supposed to.”