The St. Thomas women’s cross country team placed 26th out of 32 teams in the NCAA Division-III Championships Saturday in Winneconne, Wisconsin.
This is the second year that the Tommies qualified for the national race, and although the team hoped to place in the top 20 this year, coach Joe Sweeney said he is happy with the team’s performance.
“It’s hard in a meet like this, because it’s so competitive, and I told them that no matter what … keep fighting,” Sweeney said. “That’s what I saw in their faces and their efforts the whole race.”
Senior Emily Gapinski led the Tommies with a time of 22:19, placing 95th in the race of around 285 runners. Gapinski finished in 198th place in the NCAA Championships last year, and she said she reached her goal of improving her finish. The senior said her favorite part of the race took place at the finish line.
“Just when everyone crosses the finish line, and we’re together again as a team, there’s just a lot of positive energy from everyone,” Gapinski said.
Williams College (Massachusetts) won the event with a team score of 781 points. Cornell College junior Abrah Masterson won the women’s race with a time of 21:23, edging out the second-place finisher, Willamette College (Massachusetts) junior Olivia Mancl, by two seconds.
Junior Alex Fossum ran in the NCAA Championships last year and returned this year to earn the third-best finish for the Tommies with a time of 22:36.
“We have a total team effort, and I think that was the best part of the season is all of us training together,” Fossum said. “We worked really hard, and I think that’s what got us to nationals.”
Fossum said that the course was much more straightforward than in previous years, and despite the cold weather, she thinks everyone did very well.
“Our team usually has this thing called ‘power of the pack,’ so a lot of us run together as a pack, and we never really lost contact with one another,” she said.
With the race that included some of the best runners in the country, the Tommies faced stiff competition. Sweeney said the experience was the most important part.
“It’s about having a really good experience, which they did,” Sweeney said. “I think we took a step forward this year.”
Rachel Weiss can be reached at weis3565@stthomas.edu.