The Cornell women’s cross country team secured a sixth-place finish at the 2025 Ivy League Heptagonal Championships, held Friday at Van Cortlandt Park in New York. Senior Mairead Clas led the team with a seventh-place individual finish, clocking in at 21:17.7 and earning First Team All-Ivy honors.
“Both teams ran with conviction and demonstrated great teamwork out there on a challenging course,” said Alan B. ’53 and Elizabeth Heekin Harris Head Coach Mike Henderson. “For the women to only be 12 points out of third is bittersweet. It’s tough to be on the wrong end of a tight battle like that, but it’s a real testament to how far they’ve come as a group.”
Clas’ result marks significant progress since her freshman year, when she finished 46th on the same course during Heps competition. Henderson noted this improvement, saying: “No one exemplifies that progress more than Mairead. As a freshman, on this same course for Heps, she was 46th in 22:35. Now, as a senior, she was 7th in 21:17 and earned First Team All-Ivy.”
Junior Maisie McManus contributed by placing 19th with a time of 21:53.1. Freshmen Evelyn Prodoehl (29th, 22:03.3) and Kinga Czajkowska (32nd, 22:09.9) finished close together in their first conference championship appearances. Sophomore Hannah Kersten completed Cornell’s scoring five by taking 34th place with a time of 22:15.2.
“We were proud to see a young group take a risk and embrace an aggressive racing style,” said Assistant Coach Kayla Evans. “They committed to putting the team in a competitive position from the gun, and that’s the kind of mentality that will continue to move this program forward.”
Additional depth came from sophomores Fiona Lee (44th), Tenley Nelson (49th), Bronwyn Parks (54th), Lucia Werner (65th), junior Emma O’Day (85th), senior Madeline Nason (55th), and senior Katja Jackson (87th).
Henderson praised both teams’ collective effort during the meet: “Overall, I can’t say enough good things about both teams today — their focus, energy and commitment to each other was on full display,” he said. “Both race results were truly a full team effort.”
Cornell finished with 115 points—just behind Harvard’s fifth-place total of 112 points—and narrowly missed out on third place by twelve points.
The final team standings were Princeton first with 27 points; Yale second with 82; Columbia third at 103; Penn fourth at 105; Harvard fifth at 112; Cornell sixth at 115; Brown seventh at 169; and Dartmouth eighth with190.
