Women’s Cross Country Ready for Annual Paul Short Run

Friday, September 29

Bethlehem, Pa.

9:30 a.m.

Lehigh University

Paul Short Run

Photo by: Don Paul

Women’s Cross Country Ready for Annual Paul Short Run

9/28/2017 2:56:00 PM | Women's Cross Country

Full Paul Short Meet Preview | Live Results | Meet Schedule | 2017 Lehigh Results Sheet | Goodman Campus Course

BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Lehigh women's cross country team will return to the Goodman Campus for the third time this season on Friday morning to host the 44th annual Paul Short Run, presented by Asics. Lehigh will compete in the top-tiered Gold Race beginning at 11:45 a.m.

Lehigh is scheduled to be one of 43 teams competing in the Gold Race, which includes nationally-ranked Villanova (15), Utah State (21), and Georgetown (23) and Mississippi State (24). The Mountain Hawks, who sit at No. 9 in this week's USTFCCCA Mid-Atlantic Regional rankings, will be joined by eight other squads ranked in the region, including Villanova, Georgetown, Princeton and Penn. 2015 NCAA Division II national champion Adams State will make the trip from Colorado to compete in the Gold Race once again this year, currently ranked second in the nation in DII. For a full Paul Short meet preview including a full breakdown of all the teams slated to compete and a schedule of events, click here.

Lehigh's women have enjoyed a steady start to the 2017 season, having finished third behind West Virginia and Rutgers at the season-opening Lehigh Invitational, and capturing the program's first-ever perfect score over Lafayette in the two school's annual dual meet. Lehigh also sent a partial squad to last weekend's Coast-to-Coast Battle in Beantown, where they faced off against some of the Northeast's best teams, including four schools that appear in the national rankings.

Junior Maura Henderson has led the Mountain Hawks' pack in each of the last two meets, which includes a win in the Lafayette dual. At Paul Short last year, Henderson ran the second fastest time ever (20:40) by a Lehigh female on the Goodman Campus 6K course, and current sophomore Hannah Bonaguidi ran the fifth fastest time of 21:07. Bonaguidi took second overall against Lafayette in her lone race of the season thus far, while freshman Hannah Knudsen, sophomore Diana Hammerstone and junior Stacie Nadel have all been part of the team's top seven runners in each of their meets.

Paul Short will be Lehigh's third meet on its home course this season, with two more still to come in the Patriot League Championships on Oct. 28 and the NCAA Regionals on Nov. 10.

"It's really a mega-meet," head coach Debbie Utesch said of the Paul Short Run. "We have about 6,000 athletes on campus that day. The neatest thing in looking at the collegiate teams we have coming in, we have four of the Power Five conferences being represented on our course in one day, and then we pull in teams like Utah State from the Mountain West and a couple teams from Canada. So, it's not really just a domestic event, but it's become an international event as well."

Check back to Lehighsports.com after the meet for a full recap, video highlights and interviews.

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