LUBBOCK, Texas The Western Colorado University men's and women's cross country teams competed in the NCAA Division II South Central Region Cross Country Championships Saturday morning, with the Mountaineer women finishing in fourth place in the team standings and the men finishing fifth.
Katie Doucette and
Allison Beasley raced to top-25 finishes in the women's 6-kilometer event, with Doucette posting a fifth-place time of 20 minutes, 41.80 seconds and Beasley finishing 19th in a time of 21:21.30.
In the men's 10-kilometer race, Western's
Cade Michael (30:39.60) and
Michael Grabowski (31:03.53) ran to top-25 finishes. Michael was 12th and Grabowski crossed the finish in 22nd place.
The top three teams in the region earn automatic bids into the NCAA 2021 D-II national championship event. The NCAA also extends limited at-large bids to teams from each region across the country, now listing Western's women's and men's teams on the 'hopeful' list.
Earning automatic advancement to the NCAA championship were Adams State, Colorado School of Mines and University of Colorado at Colorado Springs from the women's 6K, and Colorado Mines, Adams state and Colorado Christian University from the men's 10K.
With a total of 129 points, the Mountaineer women were 13 points behind third-place UC-Colorado Springs. The Western men totaled 121 points, 22 back from fourth-place UC-Colorado Springs.
Alexia Thiros,
MaKenna Knez and
Gretchen Slattum were the other three scoring runners for the Mountaineer women, helping push the quintet to their fourth-place finish. Thiros was 29th in a time of 21:38.1, while Knez (38th, 21:52.4) and Slattum (45th, 22:03.5) were separated by just 11 seconds.
Overall, the five Western women were separated by only 81 seconds.
In the men's 10K,
Ryan Outler (31:07.96) trailed Grabowski by just four seconds in placing 26th overall.
Not far behind Outler was
John Houdeshell (28th, 31:15.55) and
Riley Howard (33rd, 31:27.01). The spread between Michael and Howard was a tight 47 seconds, among the narrowest spread of any of the teams competing in the men's 10K.
Along with at-large team bids, the NCAA will also extend limited at-large bids to individuals who are not part of any of the automatically-qualified teams or of any of the at-large teams. Should their squads not earn at-large invitations, Western's Doucette and Beasley are in the mix on the women's side of the ledger, while Michael and Grabowski figure to enter the conversation for individual at-large bids for the men's championship.
