ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— The University of New Mexico women’s cross country runner Weini Kelati has been named as one of four nominees for the Honda Sport Award for cross country, as announced by the Collegiate Women Sports Awards on Monday.
The nomination comes after an accomplished sophomore campaign in which Kelati emerged as the top finisher for the Lobos, racking up three individual wins and two runner-up finishes in her five appearances, including a runner-up finish at the NCAA Championship nine days ago.
In her three wins this season, Kelati posted significant margins of victories, creating gaps of over 10 seconds on each occasion between her and the next finisher. Kelati posted margins of victories of 18.1 seconds in the Mountain West Championships, 16.7 seconds in the Mountain Regional and 12.2 seconds at the Wisconsin Pre-Nationals, with a personal-best time of 19:15.0 coming at the NCAA Mountain Regional.
For her wins at the Mountain West Championships and the NCAA Mountain Regional Championship, she earned the 2018 Mountain West Student-Athlete of the Year and Mountain Region Women’s Athlete of the Year, respectively. She also became a two-time first-team All-Mountain West and two-time all-region honoree.
Kelati was twice named the Mountain West Women’s Cross Country Athlete of the Week (Oct. 2 and Oct. 16) and earned the NCAA Division I Women’s National Athlete of the Week by USTFCCCA on Oct. 15 after her win at Pre-Nationals.
With her runner-up finish in the NCAA Championship, the Virginia native collected her second All-American honor, while leading the Lobos to a runner-up finish, which resulted in a top three finish for the fourth time in five years for the Cherry and Silver.
The sophomore becomes just the fourth student-athlete in New Mexico history to be a finalist for the Honda Sports Award in any sport, and the third in cross country.
She joins fellow teammate Ednah Kurgat as well as Courtney Frerichs (2015) as Lobos who have been nominated for the award. Kurgat won the award last year after an undefeated cross country season in which she won the program’s first-ever NCAA individual title in cross country, ultimately winning all five meets she competed at and helped capture UNM’s second NCAA team title in three years.
Kelati joins Oregon’s Jessica Hull, Colorado’s Dani Jones and Wisconsin’s Alicia Monson as finalists for the award, nominated after finishing as the top four finishers at the 2018 NCAA Cross Country Championship.
According to the release, the Honda Sport Award winner for cross country will be announced this week after voting by administrators from over 1,000 NCAA member schools. Each NCAA member institution has a vote.
The Honda Sport Award has been presented annually by the CWSA for the past 43 years to the top women athletes in 12 NCAA-sanctioned sports and signifies “the best of the best in collegiate athletics.” The winner of the sport award becomes a finalist for the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year and the prestigious 2019 Honda Cup.