BETHLEHEM, Pa.—A familiar venue for the Villanova men's and women's cross country teams will be the setting on Friday afternoon as the teams compete in the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional hosted by Lehigh. The women's race goes off first at 12 p.m., followed by the men's race at 1 p.m., on the Goodman Campus Course where the Wildcats have already raced this season. There are 31 women's teams and 29 men's teams at the regional meet with spots in next week's NCAA Championships on the line.
The top two teams in both the men's and women's races on Friday will earn automatic qualifying spots to the national meet, as will the top four individual finishers whose teams do not receive a berth to the championships which take place on November 22 at Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia, Mo. The official team and individual selections for the NCAA Championships will be announced in a live selection show on NCAA.com on Saturday starting at 5 p.m. Eastern time.
Villanova is coming off a successful showing at the BIG EAST Championships last month where both the men's and women's teams had all five of their scoring runners earn All-BIG EAST honors. The women's team tallied a runner-up finish and was led by second place individual finisher
Tilly O'Connor (Spring Lake, N.J.) who was one of four Wildcats in the top 10 across the finish line.
The other first team all-conference honorees for Villanova were graduate
Margaret Carroll (Mount Wolf, Pa.), graduate
Nikki Vanasse (Martinsville, N.J.) and senior
Amelia Arrieta (Kansas City, Mo). Sophomore
Rosie Shay (Middletown, N.J.) added a second team All-BIG EAST performance for the Wildcats, who have finished first or second in the team standings at all six of their competitions this season. Villanova comes into the regional meet ranked No. 19 in the country and No. 4 in the region in the latest USTFCCCA polls.
On the men's side, junior
Bailey Habler (Sydney, Australia) and sophomore
Charlie Moore (Brisbane, Australia) each earned first team All-BIG EAST honors with top 10 finishes at the conference championships two weeks ago. Habler posted a fourth place finish for the second straight year and Moore came in ninth in his first career BIG EAST cross country meet. They were joined in earning all-conference honors by second team performers
CJ Sullivan (Milton, Mass.),
Jack Coomber (Brisbane, Australia) and
Ben Thomas (Sydney, Australia).
Like the women's team, the men are also ranked No. 4 in the Mid-Atlantic Region entering Friday's race. The start of NCAA competition means a bump up to the 10,000 meter distance for the men's races, while the women's race will be the standard 6,000 meters that teams have been running for most of the season. The Villanova men opened the year by competing in the Lehigh Invitational on August 29, while both teams competed on the Goodman Campus Course at the Paul Short Run on October 3. The Villanova women were this year's team champions and tallied their first victory since 2000 at the Paul Short meet.
An awards ceremony will close the day at Friday's NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional. The top two teams and top 25 individuals will be recognized during the awards, which occur approximately 30 minutes following the conclusion of the men's race inside the Lehigh football stadium (Goodman Stadium).
