In his first season as a collegiate cross country runner, Ryan Stender ’18 has run three impressive races thus far. Stender has helped lead the Judges to two wins on the season, placing within the top-20 finishers in all three races and eclipsing the 27-minute mark in both eight-kilometer races in which he has participated. 

“I went into the eight-kilometer [race] thinking it was going to be a whole lot harder than the five-kilometer [race] in high school,” he said. Stender said his biggest challenge has been the last part of the eight-kilometer race, thinking, ‘how am I going to run an extra two miles after I just raced really hard,” he said. “But I’ve adjusted well into it. It hasn’t been as bad as I thought they’d be and the races go just as quick as the five-kilometer [race] went,” he continued.

Stender raced to a fifth-place finish at the Emmanuel Invitational on Aug. 30, finishing the five-kilometer race in 15 minutes, 35 seconds. He followed the impressive finish with a 19th-place finish at the UMass Dartmouth Invitational on Sept. 20, his first showing at an eight-kilometer race. Stender finished that race in 25:49.85, an average mile of 5:10.0. In the third race of his career, Stender took second place at the Keene State Invitational on Oct. 4 in 26:34.

Stender’s time at the UMass Dartmouth Invitational would have placed him within the top-five at the sub-varsity race of Saturday’s Open New England Championships. The race is not usually attended by the Judges but serves as a good indicator of the region’s top runners. His average mile time would also have placed him within the top-100 of the varsity race, which was run almost exclusively by Division I runners.

Even with his successes so far this year, he says he is quick to not let them get to his head. 

“I always look at [success] as ‘never take a great race for granted,’ because you never know what could happen,” he explained. “You could trip in a hole or something, so you always have to be working hard and you can’t get ahead of yourself and can’t get cocky because you don’t know what’s going to happen.” 

The key, he said, is to “go out there and try your hardest and that keeps you from getting ahead of yourself,” he continued. 

“You have to always put in 100 percent and never assume you’re going to do amazing.”

Stender’s second-place finish at the Keene State Invitational helped the Judges take first-place overall, a race at which there was just a 1:10 spread between their top finisher and their final scorer. Stender credits their strong races so far this year to the team dynamic.

“We all have our own personalities and we all complement each other and we all love to run,” Stender said. “From my recruiting trip until now I’ve never gotten a bad vibe, they’re a great group of friends to have.”

With a pair of impressive performances so far in the eight-kilometer race, Stender has set a high bar for success but says he wants to keep turning in strong races as the season continues.

“I don’t really know [what the goals are],” he chuckled. 

“Keep doing what I’m doing, keep running well. As a team I want us all to succeed and be the best we can be and be the best team we know we can be.”