Colin Bennie is currently a sophomore at Syracuse University, majoring in Political Science. The Massachusetts native attended Wachusett Regional High School, where he was a four year member of the cross country and track team. During his high school career, Colin was a 2 x All-State Champion in the Two Mile and racked up impressive personal bests of; 1:56 in the 800, 4:14 in the Mile, and 9:07 in the Two Mile. Over the next few weeks, Colin will be blogging on MileSplit Mass about his role as an integral member of the US#2 Syracuse Orangemen and the pursuit of their first NCAA Team Title since 1951.
In this final post, Colin will recap his weekend at NCAA Northeast Regionals in Boston on 11/13 and the NCAA Championship in Louisville, Kentucky on 11/21. You can find Colin's earlier blog posts here - Blog Post #1 , Blog Post #2
It'll be a little hard for me to try and write down what these last few weeks have really meant to me, but I'm going to do my best. I'll start with Regionals, because I last checked in before we traveled back to Boston for it, and that was definitely a special race for our team. Going into the race, we knew it was going to be a hard effort - all races are - but we also wanted to do what we could to approach it in the mindset that it was closer to a final tune-up for Nationals. We were looking to have Louisville be our best day of the year. Also, given the fact that it was a really windy day in Boston, we weren't looking to go out and lead from the gun because that definitely would have drained us more than we wanted. As always, we ran our race working on making sure our pack stuck together for as long as possible and then moving up as a group. We all felt like we executed our move and ran the race as a whole really well. Putting 7 in the top 21 meant that our whole team earned All-Region honors, and that was pretty phenomenal to accomplish along with winning another team title. Another great thing that came from the weekend was that our women's team finished second in the region, also earning an auto-bid to Nationals. Being able to send our entire program to Nationals was something that we were all proud of accomplishing.
On to Nationals now. Making the trip to Nationals is always just an incredible experience. Knowing that you are going up against the best teams and individuals in the country is always a humbling experience, and the NCAA always does a great job of providing a one-of-a-kind trip from start to finish.
Just running through the course the day before the race was enough to get us all ready to go. We really didn't talk about the race and what we were hoping was going to happen too much. I think after spending the last 3 months with each other nearly every day we all knew what the others were thinking. When race day finally came we knew that it all came down to about 30 minutes of hard work and giving every bit of effort we had. Keeping in mind that we wanted to go out there and do something special, we still approached the race with the same mindset we'd been using all year. As we were warming up, we all knew what we were capable of accomplishing, but we probably didn't say a single thing about the race. We kept it light and were just having fun, enjoying the moment, and loving the fact that we had the opportunity to do something big. The race went pretty much exactly as we hoped it would. We had our group of three close to the front from the gun, and even though there were good stretches of time where we were separated from each other, we knew we were all in a good spot. And the races by the rest of the guys on the team were really the highlights of the day. Our goal going into the race was to make podium, and our 4-5-6-7 guys ran well enough that even taking out the top 2 guys from our team we'd have finished 4th. That is some pretty great depth to have as a team, and it just makes it even better to be part of a program where every single guy works just as hard as the others and is always willing to put it all on the line. As I've talked about before, racing just gets that much easier when you think about the other guys who you're racing for, and when you know that they are giving everything they've got so the team can do great things.
We accomplished a lot as a team this year, and it made it even better doing it with the great group of guys we've got here. Spending about 3 hours a day with the same group of 15 or so guys can sometimes lead to some problems, but not for us. I feel like everybody was always looking forward to practice - maybe not the hard efforts that would come with it sometimes - but getting together with the team was always a highlight. Honestly we couldn't have asked for a better group to do this with, and there definitely isn't a better coaching staff. Coach Fox, Coach Bell, and Coach Smith have put in more work than any one of us to build this program into what it is now, and it's been unreal to be a part of their team. It's still sinking in a little bit, but it really has been an incredible season and it's hard to put into words what everything we've done has meant to each one of us. It's an incredible feeling to have put in hard work for months and to be able to accomplish exactly what you want. Now, we get to turn this excitement and fire around and put it into our training for indoor and outdoor track. We all made sure to take full advantage of our time off, but now I think we're all ready to get back to work and start getting ready to do some great things on the track, and hopefully keep getting stronger so we can have another great season next fall.
Full Results from the NCAA Championship - Here