College Cross Country Roundup The Iona men and Princeton women continued their success this cross country season, winning their conference championships over the weekend as they head to the Division I Regionals Nov. 10. Coach Mick Byrne’s Iona Gaels won their 17th consecutive Metro Atlantic men’s championship, scoring 17 points, 2 over the minimum. They were led by Mohamed Khadraoui, a Moroccan emigre who starred at Paterson (N.J.) High. Marist was 2nd with 61, led by Girma Segni, an Ethiopian refugee who was the PSAL champion in high school for Brooklyn International. In the most recent coaches’ poll, Iona was ranked 4th in the U.S. The Iona women also won their 3rd straight conference title, led by Californian McKayla Plank, the individual champion. Coach Pete Farrell’s Princeton women repeated as Ivy League champions, winning the Heps last Friday at VCP with a mere 25 points. The Tigers men also won, giving Princeton a second consecutive sweep of the races. Liz Costello and Christy Johnson went 1-2. Freshman Ashley Higginson, of Colts Neck, N.J., was the #5 scorer, coming in 9th. Michael Maag, of Lake Oswego, Ore., won the individual men’s race for Princeton. The men scored 38, to 67 for Cornell. Columbia was 2nd in the women’s, with 69 points. Across the country, New Yorkers won conference championships in far-flung places. Brendan Fennell (Pearl River) won the Patriot League race as American defeated Navy by 1 point, 47-48. Fennell’s teammate Steve Hallinan was 2nd for Coach Matt Centrowitz. Bucknell and Navy tied for the women’s championship with 58 points. The individual winner was Stacey Marion of Colgate, a native of West Simsbury, Conn. Two N.Y. high school teammates won separate conference championships. Lopez Lomong won the Big Sky championship in Missoula, Mont., for Northern Arizona. NAU won the team title with 22 points. Lomong’s Tully, N.Y., teammate, Dominic Luka, won the MEAC for Norfolk State. Luka and Lomong were refugees from Sudan when they arrived in the United States. Lomong has gone on to stardom, winning the NCAA outdoor 1,500 championship last summer, and he will be one of the favorites at the Division I cross country championships Nov. 19 in Terre Haute, Ind. One of his biggest challengers in that race will be a fellow upstate New Yorker, Josh McDougal, who won the Big South Conference championship over the weekend for Liberty. McDougal’s younger brother Jordan finished 2nd. Liberty also won the women’s Big South title. In the MEAC, Maryland/Eastern Shore won both team titles as well as the individual women’s race, won by Merrecia James. The Big East was full of surprises. Louisville, led by two Kenyans, won the men’s race with 55 points, just ahead of Georgetown (60) and Providence (74). The individual winner was Bobby Curtis of Villanova, the NCAA 5,000 runnerup last year. The women’s championship went to West Virginia (77), which defeated Providence (87) and Georgetown (92). Melissa Grelli of the Hoyas was the individual winner. There were four Canadian women in the top 10. The Centrowitz family had a big weekend. Not only did Matt Sr.’s American team win in the East but his son and daughter ran for winning teams at the Pac-10 championships in Corvallis, Ore. And both those teams are currently the No.-1 ranked teams in the nation. Lauren, a senior, finished 10th for the Stanford Cardinal, which defeated a tough Oregon team, 48-64. Oregon, ranked 2nd nationally, will host the West Regional in 2 weeks. The Ducks’ Nicole Blood, formerly from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., finished 4th, losing for the first time to her freshman teammate, Californian Alex Kosinski. That race was dominated by the Stanford pair of Ari Lambie and Teresa McWalters, who broke away from the field in the first mile and ran together after that. Kosinski pulled away from Blood during the 2nd mile. After the race Lambie chatted in-person with a fellow alumna of her high school -- the Bromfield School of Harvard, Mass. -- Lynn Jennings. She and Jennings have been email correspondents for years. Jennings went on to be Heps cross country champion for Princeton, won the bronze medal in the Olympic 10,000 meters and won the world cross country championships. She now resides in Portland, Ore. Lauren’s younger brother, Matthew Centrowitz, a freshman, was the No. 8 finisher for the winning Oregon men’s team. He finished 27th overall. The top-ranked Ducks got a good test from Stanford, California and UCLA, all of which look good enough to get nods from the NCAA selection committee. (Only two teams qualify automatically for the nationals from each region.) Shadrack Kiptoo-Biwott and Galen Rupp finished 1-2 for the Ducks. Stanford’s top finisher was miler Russell Brown, 3rd, a New Hampshire native. Other Easterners who ran well included Hari Mix (Albemarle, Charlottesville, Va.), 5th for Stanford; Andrew Wheating (Kimball Union Academy, Norwich, Vt.), 14th for Oregon, and Hakon DeVries (John Jay, Hopewell Junction, N.Y.), 17th for the Cardinal. Mix was just 53rd in this race a year ago. DeVries was 5th man for Coach Peter Tegen’s Stanford team. For Rupp, it was his first race of the season after a long summer of racing in Europe. If he and Josh McDougal tangle at the NCAA championships, it would be a rematch of a race in 2004 at the Armory. Rupp came all the way to New York from his hometown of Portland, Ore., accompanied by his coach, Alberto Salazar, to make an attempt on the 2-mile record. McDougal, a home-schooled student from Peru, N.Y., showed up and spoiled the party, running 8:50 to Galen’s 8:54. In the Big 12, Colorado again swept the team titles – they have won 23 of the 24 team titles the last dozen years. In the women’s race, sophomore Aislinn Ryan (Warwick Valley, N.Y.), was the Buffaloes’ #5 runner, finishing 25th. Arkansas won its 19th consecutive men’s SEC championship; the Razorback women also were champions. Emmanuel Bor of Alabama was the individual winner. In 8th was Chris Barnicle, Arkansas’s #3 finisher. Barnicle won a Penn Relays championship in the DMR while in high school in Massachusetts. In the women’s race, runnerup Tennessee was paced by Virginia native Sarah Bowman, who finished 4th. The #4 Vol was Brittany Sheffey, freshman from Bellport (N.Y.). Twin sisters Jessica and Jenna Ortman, who transferred from Albany to Kentucky over the summer, ran well for the 5th-place Wildcats. Jessica placed 18th, Jenna 26th. In 20th was Lindsay Sundell, Florida’s #3 finisher, a New York prep. Other Division I conferences ACC Virginia won the men’s championship over North Carolina State, 32-39; the Wolfpack was also 2nd in the women’s, to Florida State, 64-102. Chris Kollar of NC State won the men’s individual, Susan Kuijken of Florida State the women’s. Division II The most recent national rankings have the Slippery Rock men rated 6th nationally, the Kutztown women 11th. Division III Coach Nick McDonough’s NYU men, currently ranked 2nd nationally behind Calvin College, went 1-2-3 to win the UAA conference championship. Washington U. of St. Louis won the women’s. Other ranked teams include the Haverford (4th) and SUNY Cortland (6th) men and the Geneseo (4th) and Plattsburgh (6th) women. /JP/ |