CULLOWHEE, N.C. – The Western Carolina women's cross country team returns to Louisville, Ky., and the EP "Tom" Sawyer Park on Friday morning to compete in the NCAA Southeast Regional Championship. The 6K race is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. Live results for the meet are available via a link on CatamountSports.com.
"I'm very excited about our meet this weekend," said head coach
Jesse Norman. "This is a top-notch field, on a great course that will give us a measuring stick of the program's progression over the past few years. This is the fist time that we've brought a team since I've been here and getting here each year is the standard that we're chasing as a program. "We've been hampered the past couple of weeks with illness but we're getting our legs back under us just in time."
Graduate student
Kate Mattison led the Catamounts with a ninth-place finish at the Southern Conference Championship on Oct. 30, becoming the first woman in program history to earn three All-Southern Conference honors during her career. Mattison's 5K time of 17:33.60 was just shy of her school record time of 17:32.90 set at the Live in Lou Classic on Oct. 1, posted at the same facility that will host Friday's meet.
As a team, the Catamounts earned a fifth-place finish in the league standings which is the highest finish for the women's team since finishing tied for fifth in 2015.
In addition to Mattison,
Alesea Caldwell,
Landey Green,
Caroline Hilliard,
Sara Klemm,
Riley McKinney, and
Sydney Runyan are entered to compete for the Catamounts. At last year's regional championship which was also held at Sawyer Park, Runyan recorded a personal best time of 23:15 which ranks 20
th on WCU's 6K all-time list.
Keep track of everything related to Catamount cross country and WCU Athletics through its social media outlets on Facebook (fb.com/catamountsports) and Twitter (@catamounts, @catamountxctf).
