DENVER Saturday's snow-lined courses at the NCAA Division II South Central Regional in Washington Park produced an automatically-qualifying (AQ) bid into the national meet for the Western Colorado men and a strong result for at-large consideration for the Mountaineer women.
Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference teams swept the top four spots in the men's 10-kilometer race, with Western's third place nabbing the final AQ from the region.
Colorado School of Mines, ranked No. 1 nationally (USTFCCCA) won the region with a score of 25 points, followed by runner-up Colorado Christian University (12th nationally) with 59 points. Western (7th nationally) scored 103 points while UC Colorado Springs (14th nationally) was fourth at the regional with 126 points.
The second-ranked Adams State Grizzlies finished in seventh place at the region, left to now hope for one of the 10 at-large spots up for grabs from the eight regional events.
In the women's 6K regional race, RMAC teams were the top five on the leaderboard, with Western finishing fifth with 127 points.
Top-ranked Adams State won the regional title with 67 points, just five points ahead of second place and third-ranked Colorado Mines. Fourth-ranked UC Colorado Springs earned the final AQ spot with 84 points and a third-place finish, while Colorado State University Pueblo (16th nationally) was fourth with 106 points, 21 ahead of 10th-ranked Western, which now is on the lookout for one of the 10 at-large bids.
Western finished the day with a trio of top 10 finishes, led by
Katie Doucette's fourth place in the women's 6K. She posted a time of 21 minutes, 28.60 seconds and was the second-fastest RMAC runner in the event. Her top-five finish locks Doucette into the national meet as at least an individual runner.
Scoring 10th-place finishes were
Allison Beasley (21:50.99) in the women's event and
Simon Kelati (31:09.36) in the men's 10K.
Kelati led the Mountaineer's red wave across the finish as the spread between him and the fifth scoring runner was just 53 seconds. Even more closely grouped were the second through fifth runners – just 17 seconds apart.
Jacob Hernandez (31:45.98) was 20th, followed by
Albert Hesse (31:52.88) in 23rd and
Michael Grabowski (32:55.06) in 24th.
Will Johnson completed the scoring spots with a 26th-place time of 32:02.18.
Cracking the top 20 in the women's race was
Leah Taylor, who was 16th in a time of 22:08.02.
The final two scoring spots for the Western women were
Emma Kjellsen (23:00.11) in 44th and
Emma Berg (23:21.76) in 57th place.
The at-large bids into the December 2 NCAA D-II national championship races will be announced on Monday, Nov. 21.
