Women’s cross country headed to NCAA Championships

– Kansas sophomore Sharon Lokedi earned all-America honors for the second consecutive season after placing fifth overall at the NCAA cross country meet Saturday at the LaVern Gibson Championship Course. By the end of the season, the team had managed to climb up to 17th in the national polls prior to the championships.

Entering the season, the Pack was ranked 30th in the USTFCCCA Preseason cross country rankings.

Those five runners totaled 586 team points to finish 35 points behind 26th-place Harvard and 10 points ahead of 28th-place UCLA.

The Kentucky women’s team finished third overall at Regionals last Friday, missing a spot in the NCAA Championships field by one point.

The Shippensburg University men’s and women’s cross country teams will venture to Florida this weekend for the 2016 NCAA Division II Cross Country Championships being held at the Abbey Course in Saint Leo, Fla. For him to perform that well on his first time here as a redshirt freshman is huge for us.

“I believe that any of the top 10 or so teams is good enough to win this year on the right day”, OSU coach Smith tells SportingAlert.

12th-ranked OR was crowned the champions on the women’s side with a total of 125 points to upset No. 5 MI (126 points) by one point, and No. 1 Colorado by nine points (134 points), who took second and third place, respectively. “It means so much to be able to carry on the legacy of success that the women’s cross country team has achieved for the last seven years”, said Horvath.

“Gotta go run the race! I’m so grateful to be a part of this team, especially at a time when the program is taking such positive steps forward”.

“Going from unranked two weeks ago to finishing 14th in the country is incredible”, UW Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Mick Byrne said.

Last year, the Spartan women combined for 13th place, tallying a score of 368, while the men finished 25th with 543.

“We didn’t perform like we really wanted to; we wanted to go to nationals as a team and that just didn’t happen”, Halsten said. He knows what they would like to do there, but he also knows what is a reasonable goal for the team to get. “They by far had their best race of the season at Nationals, but to have two individuals qualify is pretty special”, Siemers said.

Former Indianapolis North Central standout Futsum Zienasellassie led the Lumberjacks with a fourth-place finish – his third top-four finish in the NCAA meet at Terre Haute. Second-place MI had 126.