Cross country ended their seasons on a high note Saturday at the NCAA Regionals in California. Both teams showed marked improvement over past performances at the meet.
The Vikings were paced by their younger runners at last year’s regionals, where freshman Annie Kawasaki finished first for the women’s team in 58th place overall and Paul Loprinzi led the men’s team at 90th place.
Kawasaki was back this year, running her best meet of the season. She finished in 42nd place overall, with a time of 22 minutes, 48 seconds. Jenny Rodgers, who has had an exceptional season for Portland State, came in 53rd at 23:03. Freshman Brynn Cogdill finished in 81st place at 23:46. The PSU women finished 11th out of 28 teams with 375 points in the 6K.
Stanford’s Alicia Craig won the race with a time of 20:39. The second-ranked Stanford women’s team also won overall with an excellent score of 28 points, followed by second place Arizona State and third place UCLA.
The Viking men’s team finished 17th out of 23 teams. The top-ranked Cardinals won this race also, completing their sweep of the meet. University of Oregon and Cal Poly rounded out the top three.
Cardinal Donald Sage defended his 2001 title with a time of 30:13 in the 10K meters race. Viking freshman Michael Davenport had an impressive race, finishing 64th out of 160. Chris Hollis came in 80th with a time of 32:57. Evan Garich finished at 100th with a time of 33:31, and Bill Dolan was right behind him in 101st place and a time of 33:33.
Including the victories on Saturday, the Stanford men have won eight straight NCAA West Regional titles, while the women have captured the title six of the last seven years. Due to their performances at the meet, both Stanford teams, the Oregon men’s team and the Arizona State women earned places in the NCAA Championships on Nov. 25 in Indiana.
The Vikings made their own history on Saturday. Both the men’s and women’s teams ran their best-ever times at the NCAA Western Regionals.