UNM Women Ready to Run in NCAA Championship
PODCAST WITH COACH FRANKLIN
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— The Lobos are hoping that good things really do come in threes.
For the third time this season, the University of New Mexico women’s cross country team will be racing at the Zimmer Championship Cross Country Course in Madison, Wis., where the Lobos will try for their third national championship, and the third in four years after having won in 2015 and 2017.
Weini Kelati is coming off of three consecutive individual wins as she won the Wisconsin Pre-Nationals (by 12.2 seconds), the Mountain West Cross Country Championship (by 18.1 seconds) and the NCAA Mountain Regional (by 16.7 seconds). In her other previous appearance in Madison this season, the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational, the sophomore finished second behind Wisconsin’s Alicia Monson. Ednah Kurgat has finished runner-up behind Kelati in each of the last three races, but enters the championship 6K race as the defending individual champion.
The women enter the championship ranked No. 1 in the country in the latest USTFCCCA National Coaches’ Poll as well as FloTrack’s FloXC women’s team rankings. The Lobos have been ranked first in six of the eight USTFCCCA polls this season, and received nine first-place votes and 324 votes in week seven’s poll.
They will run against 30 other teams and 38 individuals and have been assigned starting box No. 3.
In their most recent race at the NCAA Mountain Regional, the Lobos placed all five scorers in the top 15 to score 41 team points, resulting in UNM’s first regional win since 2011. The Cherry and Silver had six runners in the top 16 with all six earning all-region.
Kelati finished 16.7 seconds ahead of Kurgat, crossing the line at 19:15.0 to take the individual regional title. Charlotte Prouse and Adva Cohen finished 0.1 seconds apart from each other to place 11th and 12th, at 20:05.5 and 20:05.6, respectively. Emily Martin finished 15th in just her second race of the season, improving on her first 6K time at the Mountain West Championship by 1:26.2 after finishing the NCAA regionals in 20:18.4. Sophie Eckel earned her first all-region honor with her 16th-place finish of 20:19.2, an improvement of 1:08.8 from her results in last year’s regional.
Head Coach Joe Franklin was recently named the Mountain Regional Women’s Coach of the Year and Kelati earned Mountain Region Women’s Athlete of the Year following the women’s team win and Kelati’s individual title.
In the last two appearances at the Zimmer Championship Cross Country Course, the Lobos finished third at the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational behind Boise State and Colorado, two teams that UNM will compete against on Saturday, before winning the White portion of the Wisconsin Pre-Nationals two weeks later.
Last year at the NCAA Championship, Kurgat led the Lobos with a time of 19:19.42 to become the individual national champion, producing the fastest time in championship history since the race changed to 6K in 2000 and recorded the largest margin of victory since 2014 with 7.51 seconds. Kelati was the second Lobo to cross the finish line at 19:35.77 for seventh, followed by Prouse’s 12th-place finish at 19:48.93. UNM scored 90 team points to win the national championship, defeating San Francisco by 15 points.
The women’s race will begin at 9:45 am MT and will be streamed on FloTrack for those that have a subscription.
COACH FRANKLIN PRESS CONFERENCE