Women’s cross country places fifth at Iona Meet of Champions
Posted: 09/17/2011
BRONX, N.Y. – The Lehigh women’s cross country team finished fifth overall with 125 points at the Iona Meet of Champions on Saturday improving on its fifth place finish at the meet last year. For the second race in a row, it was freshman Savanna Plombon who had the highest finish for the Mountain Hawks, placing eighth with a time of 22:45.94 while Lehigh had three runners inside the Top 20.
“Going into the meet, we had set up that a Top 8 finish would be good and a Top 5 finish would be excellent so it was great to use us finish fifth,” said head coach Debbie Utesch. “We had a lot of new faces in our Top 5 and that is just going to make our team a whole lot better.”
Senior Katherine Pierce finished 12th with a time of 23:02.52 while freshman Shannon Nelson placed 19th with a time of 23:11.72. Sophomore Marissa Galante was 41st while senior Amanda Gosselin was 45th to round out the scoring for Lehigh.
The Mountain Hawks had another pair of runners who finished in the top 60 as sophomore Katherine Howley and senior Carolyn Morse placed 52nd and 55th respectively.
“We are a very much improved group,” said Utesch. “We have a good group of three frontrunners and now we just have to close the gap between our third runner and the second pack of fourth through tenth.”
Host Iona finished first while Penn, Brown and Albany rounded out places two through fifth respectively. Iona’s Hollie Rowland won the race with a time of 21:28.55.
Lehigh will return home to host Patriot League rival Lafayette Friday, September 23 at the Goodman Campus at 5:30 p.m. The Mountain Hawks have won six-straight dual meets against Lafayette as the most recent game with 25-34 victory last year.