Women’s cross country’s finished the season on Saturday the same way it started: as the best in the nation.
The team captured its first national championship by winning the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships at ‘Tom’ Sawyer State Park in Louisville, Kentucky. It is also UNM’s second national title in any sport, joining the 2004 skiing national champions.
Head coach Joe Franklin said he is happy for the team. He said the women accomplished something great, and it means a great deal to the University, to Albuquerque and to New Mexico.
“To do what these women did is very special,” Franklin said. “The joy on their faces after this race shows that it’s going to be something they remember for the rest of their lives.”
The team finished by placing two runners in the top 10, four runners in the top 15 and all five scorers in the top 25. In comparison, second-place Colorado didn’t place any runners in the top 10, and its fifth scorer finished 65th. UNM finished with a team score of 49, which was 80 points better than its closest competitor.
Courtney Frerichs (19:48.0) was the first Lobo to cross the finish line in the six-kilometer race, coming in fourth place, followed by teammate Alice Wright (19:53.1) in fifth. Rhona Auckland (20:07.1) and Calli Thackery (20:07.3) came in 13th and 15th, respectively.
Molly Renfer (20:17.5) rounded out the scoring, placing 24th. Heleene Tambet (20:40.4), 74th, and Whitney Thornburg (20:55.4) 109th, finished better than several schools’ top scorers.
Previously, UNM’s top individual performance at nationals was a 12th-place finish in 2013 by Sammy Silva. Franklin said Silva was a fantastic runner and teammate, and laid the foundation for this team to continue building on.
Frerichs said she had no idea that they set new school records. She said everybody ran amazingly and things ended up about as perfect as could be, but the team had to overcome a less-than-perfect start. She said wearing the turquoise uniforms allowed her to follow her teammates as they charged ahead.
“I know at two (kilometers) I was a little panicked, but Molly and Alice did a fantastic job of getting up to the front,” Frerichs said. “All the schools started to cheer for us because they realized what we were about to do before we did.”
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Notre Dame’s Molly Siedel (19:28.6) capped her collegiate career by turning in the best individual time, holding off Boise State freshman Allie Ostrander (19:33.6). Although Notre Dame placed another runner in the top 10, it only had one other runner in the top 100.
This season, no other school came close to matching New Mexico’s model of consistency, depth and team running. It’s a model that the head coach said takes a team of mature individuals to buy into, and they have gone all in.
He said the clock has started ticking toward the goal of competing at nationals in 364 days. For now, the goal for the team will likely be the same: just have fun.
Robert Maler is a reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @robert_maler.
