Blue Cross Country Takes 19th at NCAA Division III Championship

WINNECONNE, Wis. – Wellesley College cross country ran to a 19th place finish thanks to a team score of 491 at the 2015 NCAA Division III Women's Cross Country Championship on Saturday afternoon at the Lake Breeze Golf Club in Winneconne, Wisconsin.

Senior Priyanka Fouda (Wellesley, Mass.) earned 39 points for the Blue, finishing with a time of 22:05.1 to lead the team and take 62nd overall in the 6,000m women's championship race. 

Williams College captured the 2015 NCAA Team Championship with a score of 81 points. The top-five also included: Geneseo State (179 points) in second, MIT (182 points) in third, Johns Hopkins University (188) in fourth and Washington University (193) in fifth. Cornell College junior Abrah Masterson (Granby, Colo.) was the individual winner with a time of 21:23.10.

Wellesley junior Sonja Cwik (La Canada, Calif.) and first-year Mary Naas (St. Paul, Minn.) helped the Blue earn three top-100 scores. Cwik was the second Blue runner across the line, scoring 62 points thanks to her time of 22:18.2. Naas wasn't far behind Cwik, scoring 70th with a time of 22:21.0. 

Junior Edie Sharon (Winchester, Mass.) and senior Alessandra Gavin (Annapolis, Md.) rounded out Wellesley's scoring runners at the championship, with Sharon scoring 153 points by virtue of her time of 23:01.0 and Gavin clocking in at 23:09.4 to score 167 points.

Junior Mary Keenan (Boerne, Texas) and senior Sharon Ng (Sunnyvale, Calif.) also ran for the Blue at the event. Keenan raced to a time of 23:19.7 (185 points), while Ng recorded a time of 23:32.0 (197 points).

Saturday's NCAA Division III championship was the final race of the 2015 season for Wellesley cross country. After earning a top-five finish at the NCAA New England Regional last weekend, the Blue made the fourth appearance in program history at the national meet (1985, 1986, 2014).