Women's Cross Country takes 5th at USCAA National Championships
Virginia Beach, VA - The Vermont Tech Women's Cross Country Team competed at the USCAA National Championships on Nov 8th, 2019.
Freshman Cassidy Lewis led the team to a 5th place finish at the meet in Virgina Beach. "This is the best showing ever by a Vermont Tech women's team at USCAA National Championships in any sport" said coach Dunkle. The race was run mostly on a grass runway at the Military Aviation Museum that stretched nearly a mile from one end to the other. Despite the strong 25 MPH winds the times were pretty fast.
The first Vermont Tech finisher was Cassidy Lewis (Strafford, VT) who set a freshman 6 KM record time of 24:20.97, which was three seconds faster than the previous record, set in 2014. Cassidy's time earned her 11th place, which also earned her a spot as a USCAA All-American 2nd Team member. Cassidy's time was 45 seconds faster than her season's best 6KM time set in September.
Cassidy's teammates followed her with fantastic performances of thier own, with 3 more Freshman taking the next three finish spots on the team. Maria Potvin (Stamford, VT) finished in 30th (26:39), Angela Lazzaro (Milton, VT) finished 45th (28:42) just 7 seconds off her PR, Emma Sanders (St. Albans, VT) finished 59th (30:11) and Senior Olivia Mendes Machado finished her career just behind Emma in 60th (30:24). The women had a really great season, starting with the training camp on Cape Cod and ending with a great showing at Nationals. A season of hard trainig and racing, overcoming injuries, early morning workouts and lots of chololate milk, as well as all the team bonding that occured, really made a difference for the performance of this team. "We earned 2nd at Conference and 5th at Nationals. We also earned 2 All-Conference, 1 All-American and 2 Academic All-American honors. Overall" siad coach Dunkle 'it was a fantastic season with a fantastic group of young athletes.
These women earned a spot in Vermont Tech sports history with the highest finish at a USCAA National Championship event for a Women's sports team, and nearly beat out all sports teams for the top spot at Nationals.
The team is looking forward to some time off before getting ready for track and off-season cross country training for next year.
