WATERVILLE, Maine -- The No. 31 nationally ranked Bates women's cross country team outraced rivals Colby and Bowdoin in both the senior/junior and sophomore/first-year races on Saturday, placing first in the CBB Class Wave Races to start the 2021 season.

The two races combined had Bates in first place with 48 points, Colby second with 86 and Bowdoin third with 106. The Bobcats are ranked fourth in the NCAA East Region in the preseason USTFCCCA poll, while Bowdoin is fifth and Colby sixth.

The meet, held at the Quarry Road Recreation Area, used traditional scoring in tallying each team's top five runners, with no displacers counted.

The Bobcats took seven of the top 11 places in the senior/junior race, including juniors Jillian Richardson (Auburn, Maine), Jordan Wilson (Medfield, Mass.) and Beth Annese (Needham, Mass.) in first, second and fourth, places, respectively. Richardson covered the 3.97-kilometer course in 14:47, the fastest time of the day, with Wilson in 15:00 and Annese in 15:17. 

Senior captain Tara Ellard (Brewster, Mass.) and junior Sarah Gallagher (Dummerston, Vt.) rounded out Bates' scoring in seventh (15:41) and eighth (15:48) places, respectively.

The sophomore/first-year race saw Colby's Claire Beebe and Lindsay Michels finish first and second, with the Bobcats taking 12 of the following 13 finishes in an impressive display of young depth. Sophomores Chrissy Aman (Hanover, N.H.) and Jen Coseno (Sutton, Mass.) finished third and fourth, respectively, both at 15:33. First-year Isabelle Demeritt (Acton, Mass.) finished fifth, followed by first-year Olivia Reynolds (Cumberland, Maine) in sixth (15:42) and first-year Lily Miller (Claremont, Calif) rounding out the team scoring in eighth place (15:50).

Bates hosts Connecticut College and No. 5 Tufts next Saturday at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester, Maine. The women's race starts at 11am, followed by the men's race at 11:45.