ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. --- The Elizabethtown College men's and women's cross country teams will be competing at the NCAA Division III Mideast Regional Championships on Saturday at Lehigh University.
The meet serves as the qualifier for the NCAA Division III Cross Country Championships, which are to be held on Saturday, Nov. 21 at Baldwin-Wallace College. The top two teams in each gender will automatically qualify for nationals, along with the top seven runners not with a qualifying team. Additional teams will be selected via the at-large process and will be announced on Sunday afternoon.
Athletes from 50 men's and 52 women's teams are registered to compete at regionals, with the 6-kilometer women's race starting at 11:00 a.m. followed by the 8-kilometer men's race at noon.
The Blue Jay men's team earned its 10th Middle Atlantic Conference team championship two weeks ago by placing five runners in the top 11. It was Elizabethtown's first MAC title since running off a string of eight in a row from 1999 through 2006. Individually,
Eric Reichert was second overall while classmate
Colby Miller finished fourth,
Myles Lund took sixth and
Evan DeArmitt placed eighth as each received first-team All-MAC recognition.
During their run of eight straight MAC championships, the Blue Jays became a fixture at the top of the regional standings. The squad won the Mideast Regional championship in 2002, and posted second-place finishes in 1999, 2001 and 2004. Elizabethtown qualified for nationals in each of those seasons, and also sent individuals to nationals in 2000, 2003, 2005 and 2006.
The 2002 squad placed six runners in the top 20, including individual champion and Runner of the Year Dustin Scott and runner-up Matt Rockwell. Scott was named All-Region three straight years (2000-02) and finished third in 2001 before winning it all in 2002.
Last year, the Blue Jays finished fifth overall at the Mideast Regional meet, held at the Greene County Airport in Waynesburg, and received an All-Region performance from Reichert, who placed 27th with a time of 26:18.
Elizabethtown enters the championships ranked 31st in the US Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) National Rankings and fifth in the Mideast Region, trailing Allegheny College (6th overall), Dickinson College (8th overall), Carnegie Mellon University (14th overall) and Haverford College (tied for 15th overall) in the regional survey while ranking ahead of Susquehanna University, Johns Hopkins University, Messiah College, Gettysburg College and Grove City College.
The Blue Jay women's team won its third consecutive MAC championship by a spread of four points over Messiah, while senior
Megan VanDenHengel captured the individual championship by 11 seconds, becoming the first Blue Jay to win the MAC individual title since Erin Fisher in both 2006 and 2007.
Taryn Shank finished sixth to take home Rookie of the Year honors, and head coach
Brian Falk was honored as Coach of the Year for the second straight season.
Like the men, the women's team has also enjoyed great success at the Mideast Regional meet. Elizabethtown has finished fourth in each of the last three years after coming in third in both 2004 and 2005. The Blue Jays qualified for the NCAA championships in 2004, 2006 and 2007 and were the last team left out of the field in 2008.
Individually, Fisher was the regional champion in 2007 and placed fifth in 2006, while Melissa St. Clair was seventh in 2003 and Pam Boteler came in fifth in 1987. Last year, Tiffany Kulp finished sixth overall and became the first Etown women's runner to compete at nationals in all four years of her career.
The Blue Jays are sixth in the latest USTFCCCA Mideast Regional rankings, trailing nationally-ranked squads Johns Hopkins (2nd), Dickinson (18th), and Haverford (34th) along with Grove City and Gettysburg while ranking ahead of Messiah, Allegheny, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Scranton.