In a field of talented runners and teams with national championship aspirations, Washington University was the only school to place both its men’s and women’s teams on the podium.

Led by a pair of seniors and packs of runners turning in their best performances as Bears, Wash. U. earned team trophies for both the men and women at the Division III Cross Country National Championships in Mason, Ohio on Saturday.

Courtesy of Tony Tribble

Senior Lucy Cheadle runs alone in second place at Saturday’s Division III Cross Country National Championships. Cheadle earned her fourth consecutive All-American honors, becoming just the 13th woman in Division III history to do so, as she led the women’s cross-country team to a fourth-place team finish.

Senior Lucy Cheadle had the best national championships finish for any runner in Wash. U.’s history, placing second overall, and both the men’s and women’s teams finished in fourth place overall.

Cheadle ran to a narrow runner-up finish, falling behind only undefeated Amy Regan of the Stevens Institute in a time of 20:58.7 on the 6-kilometer course. Only 13 women have earned All-American accolades in all four years, and Cheadle is the only runner in the last decade to accomplish the feat.

“Her performance was NCAA champion-worthy,” head coach Jeff Stiles praised. “What she has meant to the program is impossible to put into words. But she has modeled at the absolute highest level what it means to be an NCAA athlete and a Wash. U. Bear.”

“I think it really shows how well our training is designed for nationals and how our coach prepares us to run our best at nationals and not at the beginning of the season, not at the middle of the season but at the end,” Cheadle said. “That’s his program and the workouts he has us do, so it kind of just shows how that works. It’s a big honor.”

Behind Cheadle came a pack of five Bears finishing within 25 seconds of each other. Junior Ellen Toennies (49th place) and sophomore Sarah Curci (52nd) each finished more than 100 spots better than they did at nationals a year ago, and freshman Alison Lindsay finished a strong rookie season by narrowly breaking 23 minutes and placing 62nd overall.

For the women, it was a return to national prominence for a team that hadn’t competed for the title since it won in 2011. But after not qualifying for nationals two years ago and struggling to a 21st-place result last season, the 2014 Bears garnered both conference and regional titles before racing to a fourth-place national finish.

“I think it just shows that our program is a really strong program, and even if we had a down year last year, we’re definitely a team that should be contending for the podium,” Cheadle said.

Courtesy of Tony Tribble

Junior Josh Clark races in the Division III national championship on Saturday in Mason, Ohio. Clark finished 21st in the race and was one of three Bears to earn All-American honors.

Cheadle’s de facto male counterpart, fellow senior Drew Padgett, became the third-ever male Wash. U. runner to place in the top 10 at nationals by placing sixth in a time of 24:02.4 in the 8k race. Junior Josh Clark, who finished 21st overall, raced to a career-best time to also garner All-American honors. Senior Garrett Patrick (49th) and sophomore Ryan Becker (73rd) each also ran career-best times, and sophomore Dillon Williams (104th) missed a career best by just two seconds to round out the top five of Wash. U. runners.

Wash. U. tied Colby College in points for fourth place, but the Bears won the tiebreaker because their top three runners beat each of Colby’s top three.

The return of Padgett from an injury that kept him out of last week’s regionals played a large part in the Bears’ impressive result. All other performances being equal, had Padgett not run, Wash. U. would have finished back in ninth place.

“It was a huge impact—you swap out your sixth runner for a guy who is competing for the national championship. It makes a lot of difference in the team score and also just mentally for us, knowing we have guy up there battling for first, it makes us all want to help, contribute any way we can,” Clark said.

In the men’s cross-country program’s first 23 years, the team qualified for nationals only four times, never finishing better than 18th in the country in those appearances. Since 2009, however, the team has tallied six consecutive top-10 finishes, with top-five performances in the last four years.

“I think it’s just a sign of the program’s changing, and now you’re more expected to compete in the national level and we expect to be there every year,” Clark said. “And so the mentality is when you’re coming down to the team early in the summer we’re working to podium and nationals every year, and that should be the goal, and I’m glad that that’s become something that we’ve been able to accomplish.”

“Consistency at a high level is the greatest sense of being a good program, so I think it is incredible,” Stiles added about this senior class’ four straight top-five finishes.

As has been the team’s strategy all season, the Bears started out conservatively before passing their competitors in the second half of the race. Stiles estimated that the men, for instance, were mired in 10th place around 3,000 meters in before pushing forward to a fourth-place finish.

“The race went out really fast because no one wanted to get boxed in around the first corner, and the course was really muddy so everyone was trying to avoid certain spots on the course,” Clark said. “I just hung back for the first mile or two and started working my way up.”

For the women, Cheadle relied on the same racing philosophy.

“I definitely felt like the first half of the race I was able to stay relaxed and not run too hard, which is my game plan, and then just slowly starting to close the gap on Amy [Regan],” Cheadle said. She caught up to Regan and ran alongside the eventual winner until there were 400 meters left, at which point Regan created a gap up a hill.

Cheadle might have had to settle for an individual runner-up trophy, but the performance still capped off a successful career and a successful season for the Bears: Wash. U. won both the men’s and women’s conference titles, the women added a regional championship, and the Bears had the top combined team finish at nationals.

“It is about the process and feeling and not the hardware,” Stiles said. “It was a successful season prior to the meet, and the end result was the icing on the cake.”

With additional reporting by Gadiel Rosenblut.