Last year, the Oberlin cross country team won the North Coast Athletic Conference championship, but the 2024 season was the end of many of the top-placing runners’ time at Oberlin. The new season, which kicked off with the Port Kenyon Opener on Aug. 29, brings a large class of runners to replace them. Of the 30-person team, 12 are first-years. According to some of the runners and Head Coach Izzy Alexander, the new lineup brings new opportunities, new challenges, and new energy to the team. 

“There is a lot of learning that goes on in one’s first college season,” Alexander said in an email to the Review. “Incoming athletes come from a variety of training backgrounds and team experiences, and so you have all that coming together to form a group, and a whole team, learning and growing together.”

In the Port Kenyon Opener, the women’s team finished 5 of 5 and the men’s team finished 2 of 4. In the Otterbein Invite, the women’s team finished 8 of 13, and the men’s team finished 9 of 14. But the runners continue to draw confidence from their teammates and team culture. 

Amber Borofsky, College fourth-year and women’s team captain, said she has particularly high hopes and confidence for the first-year class. 

“We’ve always had really strong upperclassmen on the team and always rely a little bit on first-years to close the gap between who we have returning and where we want to be,” Borofsky said. “This year we’re seeing really strong, really dedicated first-years who are joining the team. It’s really exciting to see them so quickly becoming part of the team culture — I don’t know if they feel this way, but as a team captain, I feel like they’ve taken on the values of our team very quickly.” 

College first-year runners June Essinger and Lieke Everts also testified to the team culture being in progress. 

“The approach they’re taking to recruits is the team spirit, pulling us into this family-group,” Essinger said.

Everts said a core idea of the culture is that you’re running for your teammates as well as for yourself. 

“You want to all do well, and to do well as a team,” Everts said. “Not only do your teammates have to do well, but you also have to stay engaged in the race and do well yourself [for them].” 

Like many Oberlin teams, the cross country team enlists a wide variety of tools and strategies for success: journaling, a team dietician, celebratory stickers, and aqua-jogging for cross-training injured runners. And at the core of the cross country team’s strategy is support for their teammates and love for the sport. 

“Our culture is to support and care for each other,” Borofsky said. “We really believe that this is something we enjoy and get to do, and we want to get our first-years on the starting line thinking ‘this is something that is fun and we get to do together.’” 

According to the runners, the team can make no promises for another championship win, but they can guarantee sustained commitment to the sport and to each other. 

Alexander emphasized that every year brings new opportunities. 

“There is a saying that ‘you can’t step in the same river twice,’ and that is very much the case every year with each team. It’s never the exact same team, and it is certainly one of the things that keeps college athletics always engaging and always exciting.”