Women's Cross Country Places 11th at Regional Championships; Casey Hess Headed to National Meet
BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- Susquehanna University's women's cross country team placed 11th out of 44 schools at the 2009 NCAA Division III Mideast Region championships, held on Lehigh University's Goodman Campus on Nov. 14.
Susquehanna scored 329 team points, while Johns Hopkins University took the regional championship with 109 points.
SU's sophomore Casey Hess (Bloomsburg, Pa./Bloomsburg Area) placed fifth individually out of 311 runners with a Landmark Conference-record time of 21 minutes, 53.1 seconds on the 6,000-meter course, just 13.9 seconds behind the first-place finisher from Lebanon Valley College. Hess earned all-region honors for her performance and automatically qualified for the national championships meet. She will race as an individual at the Division III championships at Highland Park Golf Course in Cleveland, Ohio, on Saturday, Nov. 21.
Teammate, junior and fellow all-region honoree Alycia Woodruff (West Chester, Pa./West Chester East) clocked in at 22:39.3 to finish 17th. Woodruff must wait until Sunday, Nov. 15, to see if her performance is good enough to qualify for the national championships. The at-large qualifiers will be posted on NCAA.com, starting at 3 p.m. that day.
Susquehanna's junior Lauren Smith (Phillipsburg, N.J./Phillipsburg) crossed the line 84th overall with a time of 24:10.6, while freshman Carol Giblin (Cazenovia, N.Y./Christian Brothers Academy) clocked in at 24:11.8 to finish 87th. Fellow freshman Carly Bass (Flanders, N.J./Mount Olive) rounded out Susquehanna's top five, placing 136th in a time of 24:57.9.
**UPDATE: Only Hess will represent the Susquehanna women at the national meet.
Next Meet: Saturday, Nov. 21, at NCAA Division III championships-indiv. (Highland Park Golf Course; Cleveland, Ohio), 11 a.m.