Ithaca’s Pattington earns all-conference at Vassar

Ithaca High alum Noni Pattington is only in her sophomore season with the Vassar women’s cross-country team and is already impressing.

On Oct. 29, Pattington was named to the All-Liberty League Second Team after an eighth-place finish in the Liberty League Championship with a time of 23:23.5. She was close to earning First Team accolades but missed out by 4.8 seconds behind her teammate Clara Wiesler. Compared to last season’s championship race, Pattington finished 17 places higher and cut nearly 2 minutes off her old time. Pattington credited the work she put in during the offseason for her strong performance.

“For cross-country, you really start training in the summer,” Pattington said. “Something that I did differently this summer was just really trying to run five, six days a week and get some speed work and as well as long runs. If you’re able to train over the summer, you can come into August really fit and strong and ready to build even more on that with your team. It’s so much easier to train with the team, so if you come in already fit, you can really build on that.”

Pattington and the rest of the team had a home-course advantage, as the championship meet took place at Vassar Farm. The Brewers’ familiarity with the course helped them place third out of eight teams, their best finish since 2019. Vassar’s average time of 23:37.1 was only 19 seconds off second-place St. Lawrence and 27 seconds behind first-place RPI.

“We get to practice every week out on the Vassar Preserve, and we’re very familiar with the trails, with the twists and turns,” Pattington said. “We can use that to our advantage, but at the same time, at the end of the day, it’s a race, and anything can happen.”

Like many other sports, the mental aspect of cross-country is just as important, if not more, than the physical side. Pattington takes great care of her mental strength not just by herself but also with the entire team.

“We work really hard to build the kind of team culture that we want, where everyone feels safe and included and just feels comfortable talking to each other,” Pattington said. “I think that talking to each other is what builds mental strength. Once a week, our coach leads some mental strength exercises, and we’ve done mindfulness activities where we’re really spending a lot of time trying to focus on the present because during a race, that’s kind of what you need to do. In order to really show up, you need to bring your mind back to the present and be focused on racing the entire time and be focusing on passing that next person the entire time. Otherwise, we won’t be able to do it.”

Pattington is also on the track and field team at Vassar, making her one of the few athletes to play two sports in college. She’ll also be even busier than before because Vassar added an indoor track and field team this year for the winter. Being in-season throughout the entire year has its challenges, but Pattington has managed to find a balance between athletics and academics.

“It’s a very large time commitment, especially compared to high school,” Pattington said. “Practices themselves are an hour longer, at least every day, and you travel more for meets and spend more time traveling. It’s kind of difficult to find the right balance, and some weeks are definitely harder than others when we’ll have a meet that involves us being away for three days and then combined with a midterm or something like that. It’s really about managing your time correctly and using the time when you have it. For me, I think that being in a sport forces me to use the time that I have to get work done.”

Pattington was also on both cross-country and track for the Little Red. Competing at the high school level grew her love for both sports even more.

“In high school, my experience running solidified my choice to want to continue that experience in college because of how fun it was and how much fun I had with these teammates and how and the bonds that I had with the people that I was running with,” Pattington said. “My closest friends in high school were the people on the team, and it’s the same thing at Vassar.”

Pattington concluded, “You really can’t explain the feeling of finishing races with a teammate or finishing a really hard workout with a teammate. It’s so much easier with a teammate right by your side, and so there’s just a level of appreciation that’s almost unexplainable. I was really looking for that again in college, and I’m super glad that I found it.”

Send questions, comments and story ideas to editorial@VizellaMedia.com.