UNM women win national cross-country championship
Runner sets NCAA record to become UNM's first individual national champion.
The trophy case is going to need some renovations. For the second time in three years, The University of New Mexico claimed a national title in women’s crosscountry. The Lobos duplicated their 2015 championship with a second one Saturday in Louisville, Ky., as sophomore Ednah Kurgat set an NCAA record in the process.
A transfer from Liberty who ran against UNM during the national meet two years ago, Kurgat sat out last season as a redshirt before bursting onto the scene this year for head coach Joe Franklin’s program. She ran five races this fall, winning all of them.
She dominated Saturday’s race held under cloudy skies at E.P. “Tom” Sawyer Park, breaking free from the pack at about the midway point of the 6-kilometer course to cross the finish line in 19 minutes, 19.5 seconds. That topped the previous NCAA record by more than eight seconds and made her the first individual national champion in UNM history.
“Breaking away from the group was so hard,” she told the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. “My worry was to burn out towards the end. I was trying as much as possible to conserve myself just in case anything happened.”
Her winning margin was 7.51 seconds, the largest at the meet in three years.
Unlike the school’s previous championship squad that dominated the field and produced the largest winning margin in meet history, this year’s Lobos finished with 90 points to hold off San Francisco (105), Colorado (139) and Stanford (165).
“This win is different than 2015,” New Mexico head coach Joe Franklin said. “This team is a lot different. They’ve been running well all year.”
Four Lobos finished in the top 14 overall, including Weini Kelati (seventh), Charlotte Prouse (12th) and Alice Wright (14th). Alondra Negron Texidor rounded out the top-five, finishing 85th. Of those five, only one — Wright — is a senior. “Such a great day,” Franklin said. The top 40 runners earn All-America status, meaning UNM heads home with four All-Americans. That gives the Lobos 18 in that category since 2010.
It was the team’s eighth straight top-10 performance at the NCAA Championships, making it the longest active streak in the country. It’s the program’s third top-three result in the last four years and the fifth national title for a Mountain West Conference women’s team.
The title is the third in UNM history. The ski team won it all in 2004.
Coupled with Northern Arizona’s win on the men’s side, this marked the first time ever that two schools from outside the Power Five conferences have won national titles in crosscountry.