University of Washington
Pac-10 Championships
Women Tie for Third, Men Run Sixth at Pac-10 Championships
October 27, 2007 | Cross Country
Oct. 27, 2007
CORVALLIS, Ore. -
Men's Individual Results in PDF Men's Team Results in PDF
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Anita Campbell and Katie Follett both posted top-10 finishes, leading the No. 9 Husky women's cross country team to a tie for third at the Pac-10 Championships in a talented and tightly bunched women's field. Jon Harding placed 20th to pace the Husky men, who finished sixth behind five ranked teams at the meet, hosted by Oregon State.
Times were fast across the board at the Trysting Tree Golf Course, as calm winds and perfect temperatures made for ideal conditions. Top-ranked Stanford captured its 12th-consecutive Pac-10 women's title with 48 points, and Cardinal senior Arianna Lambie made history by becoming just the second woman to win three-straight Pac-10 crowns. Lambie's winning time of 19:40.7 over the 6,000-meter course was just four-hundredths of a second faster than runner-up teammate Teresa McWalters. Second-ranked Oregon finished second with 64 points, barely edging No. 5 Arizona State and Washington, which tied for third with 68 points.
Campbell's sixth-place finish in 20:10 garners her first team All-Pac-10 acclaim for the first time, after earning second team honors a year ago. Now stepping up onto the All-Pac-10 second team is Follett, a sophomore, who just one year ago placed 79th at the Pac-10 meet. Today, Follett came in ninth in a time of 20:26, nearly three full minutes faster than her time one year ago.
Freshman Marie Lawrence also earned All-Pac-10 second team honors with a 13th-place finish, adding to her outstanding rookie campaign. Lawrence was third among all freshman.
Three women earning All-Conference honors is the most ever for a Husky team since the awards began in 1999. First team honors are bestowed on the top-seven finishers, while the next seven make up the second team. Campbell also continued a remarkable string in which the UW women have been led by a different woman in each of the past 11 Pac-10 Championships, with each leader placing in the top-10. As a team, the women have now placed in the top-five for 19-consecutive years, including 12 finishes of third or better.
Barely missing out on making it four Huskies on the All-Conference team was junior Amanda Miller, who placed 15th in a new personal-best time of 20:38, her first time under 21-minutes. Senior Trisha Rasmussen also broke the 21-minute barrier, finishing 25th overall and fifth for UW in a time of 20:56. Rounding out the UW's top-seven was sophomore Brooke Anderson in 37th-place (21:19) and freshman Lauren Saylor in 41st-place (21:27).
"This is as good as I've ever seen the Pac-10," said head coach Greg Metcalf in regards to the women's field. "We had raced Oregon and Arizona State earlier this year and they beat us pretty solid, so we are very pleased with what our women did today, that was a pretty monstrous step forward for our women's program.
"Katie Follett, she was 79th a year ago, and was ninth today. It was kind of expected with the year she's had so far, but that's still an amazing jump. Mel Lawrence was healthy and she ran great. Anita ran solid. Trisha Rasmussen, being our five gal, she really closed it out for us."
While the women enjoyed one of their best Pac-10 runs in recent history, the men will bank on recent history repeating itself, as their sixth place finish matches their performance from 2006. Last season, however, the men followed that up with a fourth-place finish at Regionals which earned them an NCAA bid that resulted in a 12th-place finish.
The No. 1-ranked Oregon men won their second-straight Pac-10 title with 39 points. Duck teammates Shadrack Kiptoo-Biwott and Galen Rupp finished one and two overall, with Kiptoo-Biwott's winning time at 22:54 over the 8,000-meter course. No. 15 Stanford placed second with 55 points as they placed three runners in the top-six. No. 8 Cal was third with 70 points, No. 19 UCLA was fourth with 97 points, and No. 25 Arizona State took fifth with 105 points. The Huskies were next up with 162 points.
Harding, a junior, led the men for the third time in four meets this year, finishing in 23:34. Running second for the Dawgs in a surprise performance was junior Caleb Knox, who had never before placed in UW's top-five, and had not competed at the Pac-10 Championships since his freshman year in 2004. Knox finished 33rd in a personal-record time of 23:52.
"Caleb is making steady progress and you could tell he was calm, cool, and collected on the starting line, and he went out and ran a very solid second half of the race and did a very good job," Metcalf said."
Sophomore Kelly Spady and freshman Max O'Donoghue-McDonald were 37th, and 40th, respectively, and senior Carl Moe was fifth for UW in 47th place. Sophomore Colton Tully-Doyle had one of his strongest Husky outings since transferring from UC Santa Barbara, as he placed 53rd in a time of 24:25. Sophomore Riley Booker rounded out UW's top-seven in 58th-place with a time of 24:36.
"Coming in we were probably supposed to be sixth," said Metcalf of the men. "Jon Harding came in and ran solid, but right now we're just not entirely healthy. We're battling through some nagging pains and we've got two weeks to get it straightened out. A year ago we walked into the Pac-10 Championships and finished sixth and wound up 12th in the nation. But we've just got to go build some more momentum and get fresh and emotionally ready to go at Regionals. For our men to get to the NCAA Championships we've got to run much better than we did today. It's kind of gut-check time."
The time for laying all the cards on the table will come in two weeks at the NCAA West Regional in Springfield, Ore. The top two teams from the region gain automatic entry into the NCAA Championships. Washington's men have qualified for NCAA's in three of the last four years, while the women have made the trip in eight of the past 10. 
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