The Virginia women’s cross country team finished ninth at the 2022 NCAA Championships, and the men’s team finished 22nd, with a series of strong individual efforts in Saturday’s races in Stillwater, Okla.
The women, in their first NCAA Championship appearance since 2015, kept themselves within touching distance of the Top 10 throughout the race, positioning themselves at 11th heading into the final stages of the competition.
Mia Barnett sat in 62nd place with just one kilometer to go in the 6k race, and with a powerful kick Barnett propelled herself past a pack of her competitors and crossed the finish line first for Virginia in 44th place with a time of 20:15.3.
Less than a second later, Barnett was followed by Atkinson in 46th place with her time of 20:15.9.
Rounding out the scoring positions for the Cavaliers were Margot Appleton (55th), Anna Workman (65th) and Esther Seeland (114th).
“Our women were excellent today,” UVA director of track and field Vin Lananna said. “Finishing ninth at the NCAA Championships demonstrates the commitment to the process of building a national-caliber program and they just took a meteoric step forward in that process as they established themselves among the nation’s best.
Camryn Menninger crossed sixth among Cavaliers after running the final five kilometers with just one shoe after being clipped by a competitor.
The Cavalier men made their first appearance in the NCAA Championships since the 2019 season after securing an automatic qualifying position just one week prior at the Southeast Regionals.
The Cavaliers finished in 22nd place in the 10k led to the finish line by Derek Johnson (105th) followed by Will Anthony (129th), Justin Wachtel (136th) Wes Porter (143rd) and Yasin Sado (148th) to round out the scoring.
“On the men’s side, we came here after being disappointed that we didn’t qualify last year. This season we qualified with a young team consisting of three first-years in our top seven. We look forward to hosting this meet next season,” Lananna said.
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Chris Graham
