NEW ORLEANS — The University of New Mexico cross country team earned a pair of national awards on Tuesday as the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) honored sophomore student-athlete Ednah Kurgat and head coach Joe Franklin.
Just days after leading the Lobo women’s cross country team to its second NCAA title in the last three years, Kurgat earned Women’s National Athlete of the Year honors, while Franklin received the Peter Tegen Award for National Women’s Coach of the Year.
It’s the first time since 2010 that a single school swept the Coach of the Year and Athlete of the Year honors.
Kurgat, hailing from Eldoret, Kenya, finished her debut season at New Mexico with the program’s first-ever NCAA individual title in cross country, capping an undefeated season in which she won all five meets she ran at.
Kurgat won the individual titles at the Joe Piane Notre Dame Invitational, the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational, the Mountain West Championships and the Mountain Region Championships before emerging with an NCAA Championships record time for the six-kilometer race.
She was also named All-American, USTFCCCA Division I Mountain Region Women’s Athlete of the Year and Mountain West Cross Country Female Athlete of the Year.
Kurgat is the first New Mexico athlete and the first from the Mountain West to win this award.
Franklin, in his 11th year at New Mexico, coached the Lobo women to another NCAA Championship as they captured their second national title since 2015.
It’s also the team’s eighth-straight top-10 performance at the NCAA Championships — the longest active streak in NCAA history — and the team’s third top-three showing in the last four years, joining 2014’s third-place finish.
At Saturday’s NCAA Championship, New Mexico placed four of its five of its scorers in the top 15, led by its group of four All-Americans: Kurgat, Weini Kelati (seventh place), Charlotte Prouse (12th) and Alice Wright (14th). Additionally, Alondra Negrón Texidor finished 85th (20:36.67) to round out the Lobos’ scoring.
UNM outdistanced runner-up San Francisco by 15 points, 90 to 105, to capture the third NCAA title in University of New Mexico history. New Mexico skiing won in 2004.
The Lobos also won the team titles at the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational and Mountain West Championships (their 10th straight), while finishing second at the Joe Piane Notre Dame Invitational and at the Mountain Region Championships.
For Franklin, who was also named Mountain West Women’s Coach of the Year for the ninth time, this is his third national coach of the year honor of his career.
He also won in 2015 after guiding New Mexico to its first national title and in 2004 when he was named the National Men’s Coach of the Year while coaching at Butler University.
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