Senior Kimberlee Yalango of the Muhlenberg women’s cross country team writes about a conference championship that was memorable, to say the least.

As I reflect on this past weekend that the women’s cross country team spent at Dickinson, there are so many events and memories that stick out in my mind. I smile to myself as I remember having giggle fests in our hotel rooms, watching sophomore Kelli Meeker run for the first time in a year, and seeing freshman Sarah Costa try every different style of hair on our bus ride home. 

But the most memorable event of the weekend that every one of us will never forget was racing together in the October blizzard. Friends and family thought we were insane, and I think I might agree with them. 

When we all huddled up before the race, we couldn’t help but laugh at the winter wonderland surrounding us and the dense snowflakes catching on our eyelashes and in our hair. We knew that rain or shine, snow or sleet, we were racing, and we had to just go out there and embrace it. 

As the gun went off, the conference jetted forward, or more so drudged through the inches of snow already accumulated on the ground. When we passed through the mile mark, we all were astonished to hear times way off our usual race pace. Times no longer mattered and the race became purely a test of toughness. 

The excitement of running in the snow seemed to wear off after the first mile, especially when we started to enter the rolling hills of the forest. Girls were struggling to climb the hills and were losing balance and falling in the sloshy mess of snow and mud. Yet our team kept trucking through, even after the 90-degree hill thrown in at the 5K mark that seemed to be simply a form of inhumane torture.

As I finished the race, I couldn’t feel anything (literally) but gratitude to be able to put pants on my burning exposed legs. When I finally defrosted hours later, I realized how incredible of a race that was for our team and how close it made us all feel. 

So many of our teammates performed extraordinary feats, like Sam Mayden making first-team all-conference, Erica Bash moving up 57 places from her freshman year, and Melissa Ugelow racing the last collegiate meet of her career and helping the team tie its best place in school history. There wasn’t one person on our team that didn’t sacrifice, whether it was dragging her frigid body through the wintry course or cheering us on from the sidelines in the snowy mess. 

While that race was one of the most challenging and intense meets any of us have ever witnessed, I know there’s no other place any of us would have rather been on that snowy Saturday morning.

photos by Cassandra Kozakis