UNM Women Rank 13th in USTFCCCA Preseason Outdoor Ranking
USTFCCCA RELEASE | TEAM SUMMARY | EVENT SUMMARY
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— The University of New Mexico women’s track and field team has been ranked 13th in the National TFRI Team Summary rankings for outdoor track and field, as announced by the USTFCCCA on Monday afternoon.
The 13th ranking was the highest preseason outdoor ranking in program history.
UNM tallied 144.95 points in the team summary, 9.89 behind No. 12 Alabama and 12.65 points ahead of No. 14 Texas Tech. The Lobos are the highest-ranked Mountain West school with Boise State at 21 with 97.21 as the next school in the ranking.
Five distance group runners comprised the scoring for the Lobos, with several Lobos scoring marks in multiple events after taking into account their 2018 season-best times.
Weini Kelati contributed to the team score in the 1500-meter, the 5000-meter and the 10,000-meter, while Ednah Kurgat provided scoring in the 5000-meter and the 10,000-meter event. Kurgat and Kelati’s marks were the two highest totals towards the team total with the first- and second-place NPR ranking, or the first- and second-fastest times recorded.
In the steeplechase, the Lobos had three runners with Charlotte Prouse, Adva Cohen and Natasha Bernal, with Prouse having the third-highest point total on the team with a second-place NPR ranking in the event.
Last season, the women started 32nd in the preseason outdoor rankings, reaching as high as 12 in week seven before finishing 17th at the NCAA Championship.
However, the women are coming off of a record performance at the NCAA Indoor Championships on March 8 and 9, finishing a program-best fifth in the team standings with a program-best 23 points. No Lobo team, men or women, had ever scored that many points at the championship meet and the last time that UNM had a top-five finish in the team standings was in 1967 in which the men’s team tied for fifth. The Lobos had three scorers in the two-day meet in Kelati, Kurgat and Prouse.
UNM opens its outdoor portion of the track and field season on the weekend of March 28 with the Mike Fanelli Track Classic in San Francisco, Calif., the Stanford Invitational and the Cal State Fullerton Titan Team Challenge.
The Lobos will host one outdoor meet this season on April 6, the Don Kirby Tailwind Invitational.