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The New Mexico men’s and women’s cross country teams both qualified for the NCAA Championships after finishing third and second, respectively, at the NCAA Mountain Region Championship on Friday at Ogden, Utah.
The women received an automatic berth into the NCAAs, while the men earned an at-large bid on Saturday.
For the women, Sammy Silva took the individual title in 20 minutes, 29.3 seconds on the six-kilometer course. Silva became the first UNM runner to win a women’s regional in more than 30 years — since 1981.
Charlotte Arter placed third with a time of 20:34.8. The two became the first UNM women’s pair to ever claim two top-three finishes as a regional meet.
“The women ran OK,” head coach Joe Franklin said in a release. “We had a couple of really, really solid races and we had some average races, but the nice thing is that if this is your average day, that’s a pretty good day.”
This will mark the sixth straight year that the women will compete at the NCAAs, and the fifth straight year for the men.
“There can’t be many teams that have done that,” Franklin said about the women. “It’s just what we try to do. We just get better and better and better. And I think we’re slowly doing that.”
The UNM women scored 69 points, their lowest total since a 53-point effort in a 2010 NCAA Regional victory. The Lobos took second place last year, as well.
Colorado won the team championship and the other automatic bid with 29 points, BYU took third with 109 points, Weber State finished fourth with 160 and Air Force was fifth with 185.
The men’s field was filled with top competition as seven nationally ranked teams competed, two of which were No. 1 Colorado and No. 2 Arizona.
“The guys ran phenomenally and very comfortably, which was nice,” Franklin said. “It looked like a Friday practice.”
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Luke Caldwell paced UNM with a sixth-place finish, clocking in at 29:46.1 on the 10K course. Adam Bitchell took eighth at 29.47.2. This was the first time UNM had two top-ten finishers since 2010.
The Lobos earned 79 points, which was 10 more than second-place Colorado and 18 behind champion Northern Arizona. Texas Tech’s Kennedy Kithuka won the individual crown with a time of 29:23.6.
The NCAA Tournament will be held this Saturday in Terre Haute, Ind.
