Henderson Earns All-League Honors as Lehigh Places Fourth at Patriot League Championships

Saturday, October 28

Bethlehem, Pa.

11 a.m.

Lehigh University

Patriot League Championships

Photo by: Don Paul

Henderson Earns All-League Honors as Lehigh Places Fourth at Patriot League Championships

10/28/2017 6:14:00 PM | Women's Cross Country

Results – TFRRS | PDF
Full recap on PatriotLeague.org

BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Lehigh women's cross country team raced to a fourth place finish on Saturday afternoon at the Patriot League Championships, hosted by Lehigh at the Goodman Campus Cross Country Course. Junior Maura Henderson finished eighth overall to earn Second Team All-Patriot League accolades, her second cross country all-league honor is as many years.

Bucknell captured the team title for the third straight year with 58 points, followed by Army West Point (79) and Navy (88). Lehigh tallied 105 points and Holy Cross was fifth with 119. American (125), Boston U. (152), Loyola (240), Lafayette (241) and Colgate (288) rounded out the 10-team field.

"I think we did a good job of going out the first mile," said head coach Debbie Utesch. "We had the women where they needed to be at that point. They were racing like they wanted to win a championship. We knew coming into it there were four teams in contention to win this, with us being one of them, we just didn't want to end up fourth. It is a disappointing finish, but I think we have to celebrate the little victories that happened within the race and continue to look for the little things we can continue to learn from going forward."

Henderson took eighth place overall in the field of 109 finishers with a time of 21:36.7. Junior Stacie Nadel followed in 15th place in 21:55.4, sophomore Ashleigh Crawford (21:59.3) finished 18th and sophomore Hannah Bonaguidi came in 21st (22:03.6). Sophomore Diana Hammerstone placed 45th (22:34.9), followed by junior Stephanie Hayes (46th/22:36.7) and sophomore Jenn Mickens (48th/22:39.8) to round out the team's scoring seven runners.

"I think our biggest challenge is we've made such great strides the last couple years where a bad race used to be sixth or seventh, now we have a disappointing race when we finish fourth," Utesch said. "We're getting there, but we need that final piece to really learn how to become a winning team and have a winning culture in our program. We're getting closer and closer and one of these days we're going to be at the top of the podium."

Freshman Hannah Knudsen (23:25.1), sophomore Sydney Brannon (23:42.3), senior Laura Barnes (23:51.7) and junior Grace Eckstein (24:01.1) also competed for the Mountain Hawks.

"We have some new people in new roles this year and they're learning how to handle pressure when they get into a championship competition," Utesch said. "I think part of that difference is just staying poised throughout the whole race. We handled the first half of it pretty well, but we didn't handle the tail end of it across the board. We have a lot of people coming back and a lot of room to keep growing. We're moving in the right direction, we just have to keep moving upward."

Lehigh will have one last race on the Goodman Campus Course in two weeks on Friday, Nov. 10 when they host the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regionals and look to qualify runners for nationals. Check back to Lehighsports.com leading up to the meet for complete coverage.

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