VILLANOVA, Pa.—First year distance runner
Zoe Mosher (Pleasantville, N.S.) was officially named to Team Canada this week for the upcoming World Athletics Cross Country Championships. She earned the chance to represent her country on a world stage after finishing fifth in the U20 Women's race at the Athletics Canada Canadian Cross Country Championships last weekend. Mosher is coming off a strong collegiate debut season for Villanova and will now be among the top Canadian cross country runners at the world championships in Tallahassee, Fla. next month.
Last week's Canadian Cross Country Championships took place at Fanshawe Golf Course in London, Ont., and Mosher represented her hometown club, Athletics East. She finished fifth in a field of 70 runners and crossed the finish line with a time of 28:51.0 in the 8,000-meter race. It was a particularly impressive result considering that the distance was a step up from the collegiate standard of 6,000 meters which is also the distance for the world championships.
Mosher was running for the third consecutive week and fourth time in the past five weeks when she toed the starting line at the Canadian championships. She was part of the Wildcats lineup for all three collegiate postseason meets, beginning with the BIG EAST Championships in Ashland, Neb., on October 31 and continuing to the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional in Bethlehem, Pa., on November 15 and the NCAA Championships in Columbia, Mo., on November 22.
This year's World Athletics Cross Country Championships take place on American soil for the first time in more than 30 years. The championships will be held on Saturday, January 10, in Tallahassee, Fla. at Apalachee Regional Park. The course hosted the NCAA Championships in 2021. The last time the world championships were held in the United States was in 1992 when the meet was at Franklin Park in Boston, Mass.
Mosher made six starts during the collegiate cross country season and had a strong Villanova debut at the Main Line Invitational where she was the Wildcats top finisher with a fifth place result out of 94 runners. She was Villanova's fifth scoring runner at the Pre-National Invitational where she posted her season-best 6K time of 20:44.1. Mosher was less than seven seconds off an All-BIG EAST finish in her conference championships debut on October 31.
Several of the young runners on the Wildcats roster opened opportunities for themselves based on their success during the collegiate season. The quartet of Mosher,
Maeve Smith (Ocean City, N.J.),
Cecilia Montagnese (Leetsdale, Pa.) and
Sophia McInnes (Bayport, N.Y.) were each among the top 14 first year runners at the BIG EAST Championships.
Smith and Montagnese each qualified for the USATF Cross Country Championships this weekend in Portland, Ore., and Smith will be competing in the U20 Women's race on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time (3:30 p.m. Pacific time). McInnes is making her collegiate track & field debut on Saturday at the Penn Opener where she is slated to run the 3,000 meters.
