Henderson paces Lehigh women at Battle in Beantown

Friday, September 22

Boston, Mass.

3 p.m.

Lehigh University

Coast-to-Coast Battle in Beantown

Henderson paces Lehigh women at Battle in Beantown

9/22/2017 9:09:00 PM | Women's Cross Country

Complete Results (TFRRS) | 2017 Women's XC Stats Sheet

BOSTON – Competing against some of the nation's top teams and runners, the Lehigh women's cross country team finished 16th out of 22 teams at the Coast-to-Coast Battle in Beantown Friday at historic Franklin Park. Junior Maura Henderson led the Mountain Hawks over the 5K course, finishing 35th overall with a time of 18:00.5.

"She had a little bit of a hard time today," Lehigh head coach Debbie Utesch said of Henderson, who was coming off a win in the Lehigh-Lafayette dual meet. "She went out really well and was running with the pack that she needed to be running with through the first mile and a half. Then she just flattened out a little bit today in her racing. She didn't perform at the level that she wanted to do, but it's still September and she's got some things to assess and adjust, and she'll be ready to go at the end of the season."

The Mountain Hawks entered eight runners in the event and finished with 429 points. Junior Stacey Nadel and sophomore Ashleigh Crawford also turned in top-100 finishes for the Brown and White, with Nadel taking 57th place in 18:23.9 and Crawford finishing 89th in 18:44.7.

"I think we've run without probably three of our top seven girls, and that gave some different kids on our team the opportunity to step up and be in scoring positions," Utesch said. "I think those new faces in the mix handled that pretty well. It was a pretty high-powered women's competition, so I think for our younger kids, they went into it a little bit intimidated, but I was really pleased with how aggressive we were at the starting line. Even though they might have been nervous going into it, they didn't start the race like they were."

Also competing for Lehigh, ranked eighth in the latest USTFCCCA Mid-Atlantic Regional Rankings, were freshman Hannah Knudsen, sophomore Jenn Mickens, freshman Elyse Barkstrom, senior Laura Barnes and freshman Ginger Pojednic.

Knudsen was Lehigh's fourth scorer at 19:16.5, good for 137th place, while Mickens finished 150th at 19:23.2. Barkstrom clocked in at 19:30.4 to finish 153rd, while Barnes finished 156th in her season debut with a time of 19:31.4. Pojnedic finished 177th, crossing the finish line in 20:19.5.

"When you look at some of the results and you just generically plug in the people who didn't race with us today to where we think they would be, then all of a sudden we're in the top 10 when you make that kind of adjustment," Utesch said. "That's a pretty good place to be moving forward. We had a really nice pack with Jenn Mickens, Laura Barnes' first race back after a late season injury, and then a couple freshman, Hannah and Elyse. So they did a really nice job of working in a high-powered meet together. Stacie Nadel had a tremendous race and continued on the campaign that she's been putting together so far this year, which is racing at a new level."

Nationally-ranked Providence captured the team title with 71 points, besting nationally-ranked Indiana and Georgetown by seven points. New Hampshire's Elinor Purrier was the individual champion with a time of 16:48.6.

"It was good to see Boston University," Utesch said of some of Lehigh's league and regional competition at the meet. "I don't know if they had their full squad out there. But it was good to see one Patriot League team there, and then also to see Rutgers, who even though we didn't have a full squad in the first meet of the year either, they snuck by us and then this week, we came back and beat them. I'd say we're pretty optimistic for the rest of the season when we get our full squad back together."

The Mountain Hawks will host the 44th annual Paul Short Run, Friday Sept. 29 on the Goodman Campus Cross Country Course.

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