At the Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) Invite on Oct. 9, the men’s and women’s cross-country teams both came out victorious for the first time since 2018. Just one weekend after Pre-Nationals, Sagehen men swept the podium, claiming the top five places with a perfect score, the first in meet history.
Owen Irving PO ’28, this week’s SCIAC Men’s cross country athlete of the week, led the men’s P-P 8k team, racing 25:17.4. Just behind him, rounding out the podium-sweeping Sagehens, were Tiernan Colby PO ’27 (25:21.7), Nate Wehner PO ’28 (25:31.3), Jefferson Wright PO ’28 (25:37.3) and Peter Neid PO ’27 (25:52.1).
“We came in with a plan to group up as a pack, and I think we did well with that,” Irving said. “The highlight of the race for me was just running with my teammates. We had a good group up front, so I was really happy to see my friends next to me.”
The women’s 6-kilometer P-P team, which finished with Maggie Avey PO ’27 in second (22:07.5), Lili Maycock PO ’28 in third (22:11.8) and Anna Hirsch PO ’30 in fourth (22:16.1), also credits their success in the difficult race to feeding off each other’s energy.
“Cross-country kind of seems like an individual sport, but it really is a team sport,” Avey, this week’s SCIAC Women’s Cross Country Athlete of the Week, said. “Going into every race, you have to accept that it’s going to be really hard, but it always makes it easier having your teammates with you. It’s like a big hug.”
Both the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) and P-P teams raced last weekend at the Pre-Nationals meet at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. The CMS women’s and men’s teams placed seventh and 15th, respectively, while the P-P women’s and men’s teams both placed ninth. The back-to-back meets influenced both teams’ strategies.
“We just came off a travel trip last weekend, so we weren’t as fresh in the legs going into the race today,” said Emma DeLira, P-P’s associate head coach of cross-country and track & field. “Still, we executed to our best ability, and I think it just sets us up for the postseason in the coming weeks, which is going to be exciting.”
Seven of the eight runners on the P-P women’s pre-nationals team also competed at the P-P Invite. CMS took a different approach, sending none of their women’s pre-nationals runners to the P-P Invite. Still, the CMS 6k team finished in third place with a total of 93 points. Talia Green HM ’28 led the team with a fifth-place finish in 22:21.5.
“Our pre-nationals team raced last week in Minnesota, so they weren’t racing at this meet,” Green said. “This was half our team racing here.”
Runners across teams said what makes cross-country difficult is not just the physical but the mental aspect of the sport.
“This season we’ve been focusing on mentality a lot,” Green said. “We started doing mental coaching sessions every week, and that’s something that our team is really focusing on this year. Today I wanted to focus on staying calm at the start, being brave, and pushing through the finish as best I could.”
DeLira, the 2025 USTFCCCA West Region Men’s Cross Country Coach of the Year Award winner, explained how she prepares her team to overcome mental roadblocks.
“It’s about reassuring the runners and going over what we tell ourselves when things get hard, how we respond to moments that may not go well in the race, and ways to reset and reengage in the race,” DeLira said.
In addition to the energy the P-P team cultivated with one another and their coaches, they felt the strength of the home-court advantage.
“We train on this course pretty much every Tuesday, so we know it pretty well,” Irving said. “It’s always good to have a home crowd. I think it’s good to get a race effort on it, with other people around, so you really try more than in training. We know our terrain.”
The Sagehens, Athenas and Stags all move forward from the P-P Invite with an eye on the larger prizes.
“The strategy for the rest of the season is to take care of one week at a time and focus on the end result, which is obviously conference, regionals and nationals,” DeLira said. “We want to be the best team out there.”
The SCIAC Championships take place on Oct. 30 at the Strehle Track at Pomona College. P-P leads the 2026 SCIAC Men’s Cross Country Preseason Poll as they look to capture their sixth consecutive conference title, while CMS remains the top contender in the women’s field.
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