By Matt Richardson

At 10:59 am, the slightly overanxious gun resonated across the St.FX field, sending the crowd of thirty-four similarly-minded women rushing out of the starting boxes. The sunny but cold and windy conditions were typical for the season-ending race of the AUAA conference. However, Dal knew that there was another bigger, more important race after this one -the CIAU championships. Only one woman running for the team this year had been to that race before, but they all went out with the idea of changing that.

Within two minutes, nobody could mistake the diminutive figure of Dalhousie's star rookie Kristen Lewis taking the lead on the far side of the course. Only one other girl, St.FX's Lavinia Gough, had the motivation to take up the punishing pace. For the whole season, and even years before in high school, these girls had fought it out on various venues around the province. This day would be no different.

Twenty metres later, the group forming at the front of the main pack was unmistakably dressed in black, showing the gold-coloured Tigers on their race singlets to all those behind them. From this gathering emerged Jessica Fraser, the women's team captain, and rookie Kelly McKean, former Dal soccer player and third-ranked woman on the team so far this year. They strode ahead, followed closely by the rest of their teammates, which included another Dal rookie, Amy Higgins. A lone Memorial runner, Gillian Royle, took up the challenge.

Halfway through the race, Gough was still hanging tough with Lewis, who looked smooth and in control. Lewis had not lost a single AUAA race this year, a feat rarely attained by any rookie in the history of the conference. Shortly after passing the crowd and heading into her second of two major loops, Lewis slowly started pulling away from Gough, a move she would later describe as "unintentional".

McKean began to take command about forty-five seconds back from the front two, "running within herself", and pulling ahead of captain Fraser. Following was another rookie, Juliet Thornton, who was clearly having her best race of the season. Battling it out to this point were also Higgins and Memorial's Royle, with the final two Dal runners, medical student Sandy Smith and triathlete Karen Martin on their heels. Showing experience beyond her years, Higgins made a gutsy move to drop the MUN runner and intentionally surged ahead.

"I knew I had to do it," she commented later.

As race leader Lewis came into sight on the final stretch, the crowd could see a sizable gap had opened up, and she crossed the line in a phenomenal 18:23, claiming her first AUAA title with a composure that ensured it would not be her last. Gough finished ten seconds later, followed by McKean one second shy of a minute after that. Fraser was a further fifteen seconds after in 19:47, and a strong finish by Thornton in 19:53 left only one Dal runner left to cross the line in order to seal the victory. Exactly twenty minutes and one second after the gun fired, Higgins - the final scoring runner for the Dal team - crossed the line, a little out of breath but nonetheless exuberant with her sixth-place finish. The Dalhousie women's cross country team had just sealed their twelfth consecutive AUAA conference Championship. Smith (20: 18) and Martin (20:21) claimed 8th and 9th places, respectively, allowing Dal to take seven out of the top ten spots. The scoring point total for Dalhousie was 19, to MUN's 58, St.FX's 67, and UNB 's 100.

After the race, newly-appointed women's Coach of the Year AI Yarr noted that "The quality of an athlete comes from mind and spirit. This group has great mind and spirit. On any given day, and any set of circumstances, they do what they can, and some people do more. You can't be disappointed with that."

The race was hardly over before the women had their sights set on the next task: the CIAU championships in London, Ontario on November 8th.

"It's going to be a very different experience," said Fraser, noting that their current eighth-place national ranking could easily be improved upon. Joel Dalrymple, a Dal men's track recruit this year, agreed with Fraser after watching the race, stating that the women's performance "was impressive, especially at a university level."

As for Kristen Lewis, AUAA champion, the only thing on her mind is if she can "run as fast as the leaders". You have a feeling that the top runners had better be listening. Even wary, perhaps.

First published in the Dalhousie Gazette vol 130, i