Senior Emily Anderson will be making her third NCAA Championship appearance on Saturday afternoon. |
Skyhawks coming off runner-up finish at East Region Championship on November 22nd
EASTON, Mass. (December 4, 2014) – The Stonehill College women's cross country team, ranked No. 20 in the latest U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Division II poll, will compete in its 15th consecutive NCAA Division II Championship this Saturday as part of the NCAA Fall Festival at the E.P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park in Louisville, Kentucky at 12:15 p.m.
Live streams for both the men's and women's championship races can be found at NCAA.com beginning at 11 a.m. on Saturday morning.
Stonehill, which has appeared in every NCAA Championship dating back to 2000, will be looking to improve upon its 25th place finish from last fall. The Skyhawks captured their sixth consecutive Northeast-10 Conference title on November 9th on the campus of Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire, before posting a runner-up finish at the NCAA East Region Championship two weekends later at Mine Falls Park in Nashua, New Hampshire.
Stonehill's roster includes five student-athletes that have raced at past NCAA Championships, including senior Emily Anderson (Manchester, Connecticut/Manchester), who has a pair of NCAA meets under her belt. The two-time All-Region performer placed 161st and clocked in with a time of 22:52 as a sophomore in 2012 on the campus of Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, Missouri, before finishing 172nd in 23:20.3 last fall at the Plantes Ferry Park & Sports Complex in Spokane, Washington.
Sophomore Nicole Borofski (Plymouth, Massachusetts/Plymouth North), who paced the Skyhawks at both the NE-10 and East Region Championship meets with second and third place finishes, respectively, will be making her second consecutive NCAA Championship appearance after earning a time of 24:26.2, good for 220th overall, last fall.
Sophomore Nicole Borofski was Stonehill's top finisher at both the NE-10 and East Region Championships. |
Senior Brittany Venturo (Taunton, Massachusetts/Coyle & Cassidy) and sophomore Aisha McAdams (North Kingstown, Rhode Island/North Kingstown) both made their NCAA Championship debuts a season ago, with Venturo finishing 200th in 23:48.8 and McAdams crossing the finish line 216th and posting a time of 24:18.1.
Freshman Emily Knox (Worcester, Massachusetts/Notre Dame Academy) will likely cap an impressive rookie campaign with the first NCAA Championship race of her career on Saturday. Knox, a three time NE-10 Rookie of the Week, earned both All-NE-10 second team and All-East Region honors with her 13th and tenth-place finishes, respectively. The Worcester, Mass. native opened her collegiate career with an 11th place effort in 19:42.9 at the five-kilometer Shacklette Invitational on September 6th, before breaking into the top-10 the following week with a ninth place performance in 23:32 at the DII/DIII Challenge.
Stonehill's final two likely entries on Saturday are senior Erin Rielly (Burlington, Massachusetts/Burlington) and sophomore Alexandra Buonfiglio (Lynnfield, Massachusetts/Lynnfield), neither of whom have NCAA Championship experience. Buonfiglio collected second team All-NE-10 and All-East Region honors in Stonehill's last two races.
The Skyhawks have finished 25th, 23rd, and 19th in their last three NCAA Championship appearances. The program's highest finish came in 2003, when Stonehill placed 10th overall among 24 teams at the WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, North Carolina.
Stonehill boasts five All-American performers in program history. Meghann Shanahan, '04, and Diana Chivakos, '05, became the first two to accomplish the feat in 2000 and 2004, respectively. In 2006, senior Kelly Chaisson, '07, finished 27th overall at the Escambia County Equestrian Center in Pensacola, Florida, becoming the third Skyhawk to earn All-America honors. Erin Carmone, '13, owns the best finish ever for a Stonehill student-athlete at the national level, as she placed 23rd overall as a freshman in 2009 at the NCAA Championship hosted by the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, Indiana. Chelsea Bishop, '14, posted the fifth All-America performance in program history last fall, as she placed 36th overall in 21:47.3.
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