The University’s fledgling combination cross country and track team filled in several organizational blanks Thursday when fourth-year head coach Terry Weir announced the fall schedule of cross country races as well as the incoming recruiting class.
Cross country and track has signed six female and six male student-athletes to the roster for the 2014 season. The team will compete in four cross-country races in the fall leading up to the Atlantic 10 championships before taking on the winter indoor and spring outdoor track seasons.
“Being able to afford these student-athletes the opportunity to compete all year will play a huge role in our athletic achievements moving forward,” Weir told GWsports.com in a release.
The incoming class features International Association of Athletics Federations World Youth Track & Field Championship qualifier Carter Day, who will compete for Canada in the 800-meter run at the event this summer. The Windsor, Ontario native also competed at the championships in the Ukraine last summer.
Another recruit and 800 runner, Luke Dublirer, was a First Team All-Bergen County nominee as a member of the 4×800-meter indoor relay team his junior and senior years at Ridgewood High School.
Lexington, S.C. native Thomas Harris and Satellite Beach, Fla. native Chris Shaffer are strong in the 4×800- and 1600-meter runs, respectively. Ryan DiPinto, who placed first in the 1600-meter event at the New York State Section VIII Championships with a time of 4:23.29, and Melrose High School winter and spring track captain Charles Arnold round out the male recruits.
The newcomers are headlined on the women’s side by Hannah Rowe, a graduate student transfer from Dartmouth who finished third in the 10,000-meter race for the Big Green at the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championship Meet in 2013, the same year the team won the Ivy League Championship.
San Francisco native Caroline Coulter will join the team after an MVP senior year at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, along with 3,200-meter Ohio Southwestern Conference Champion and District Champion Miranda DiBiasio, a four-time team MVP at Berea-Midpark.
Liberty Mason-Sharma will join the varsity team after competing for GW Club Cross Country in 2013-14. Malvern, Pa. product Samantha Shenk and Carlsbad High School cross country MVP Lauren t’Kint de Roodenbeke make up the rest of the newcomers.
The fleet of runners will focus on middle and distance events in track to complement their longer cross country distances.
The cross country season will mostly keep them close to campus, with the season-opening Catholic Invitational in Northeast D.C. on Sept. 6, the men’s Navy Invitational and women’s Salty Dog Invitational in Annapolis, M.D. on Sept. 13 and the George Mason Invitational in Leesburg, Va. on Oct. 4.
The team will venture slightly further afield for the regular season-closing Princeton Invitational in Princeton, N.J. on Oct. 18 before heading to the A-10 Championship at Schenley Park in Pittsburgh, Pa. on Nov. 2. Should the Colonials qualify for them, the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regionals would follow on Nov. 14 in State College, Pa.
Track will begin it’s first year after reinstatement in the winter, allowing GW athletes the chance to run year-round in the University’s 27th varsity intercollegiate athletics team. Eleven of the 13 A-10 schools completed in indoor and outdoor track in 2012-13.
