Falcons Women’s Cross Country Repeat as NCAA DII Southeast Region Champions
WINGATE, N.C. – On a wet and muddy Saturday morning the Montevallo women's cross country team won their second consecutive Southeast Region Championship in dominating fashion.
In the individual standings, Young Harris’ Nancy Murgor and Augusta University’s Olivia Rodriguez also qualified for the national finals.
Five runners placed in the top-10 to give the Falcons their largest margin of victory in the program's history. Montevallo finished with 30 points while the nearest competitor and host Wingate came in second with 108 points. Today's 78-point margin of victory is the largest in the program's history and surpassed last year's 30-point victory.
With today's victory the Falcons are headed back to Nationals as a team for the third time in five years.
Sophomore Katie Nelson paced the Falcons as she finished the race in third place with a time of 23:17.7. Nelson finished 52 seconds behind the leader Catie Boyd of Queens (N.C.) and 32 seconds back of fellow Peach Belt runner Nancy Murgor of Young Harris.
Fellow sophomore Sierra Millsaps finished seven seconds behind Nelson to claim fourth place with a time of 23:24.8.
A pair of juniors finished in sixth and seventh place with Anna Leinheiser recording a 23:27.7 and Cheyenne Thompson finishing right behind her with a 23:28.9.
Junior Katherine Terino rounded out the top-10, finishing with a time of 23:49.1.
Sophomore Hannah Evans finished in 15th place in the individual standings with a time of 23:55.5.
Junior Natalie Shoemaker posted a time of 24:48.1 to finish 38th in the individual standings.
Nelson, Millsaps, Thompson, Evans, Terino, and Leinheiser earned All-Region honors following the championship race.
Young Harris freshman Nancy Murgor, who won the Peach Belt Conference title two weeks ago, finished in second place out of the 182 runners with a time of 22:45.1 on the wet, sloppy course that had be inundated with rain over the past week. She was the top harrier not on one of the three advancing teams to earn one of the region's individual berths.
Junior Olivia Rodriguez led the Jaguars for the sixth time this season and finished fifth overall to qualify as an individual to the NCAA Championships. In all six meets this year, Rodriguez paced Augusta and nothing changed at the NCAA Southeast Regional as Rodriguez blazed the course and took fifth out of 182 runners with a time of 23:26.1.
North Georgia finished fourth in the team standings while Flagler was fifth.
The Falcons, Murgor and Rodriguez will now prepare for the Women's Cross Country National Championship which will be held in Joplin, Missouri on November 21, 2015.