While the Gator football team played its final home game on Saturday, the cross country team was busy running their final meet at the NCAA Championships in Louisville, Kentucky.
Junior Stephanie Strasser was excited to see how the women would perform after qualifying for the national meet for the sixth time in the last seven years.
“I just want to see my team get top ten,” she said. “I know we can do that, we’ve worked extremely hard. This is probably one of the strongest teams depth-wise and health-wise that we’ve had this late in the season.”
While they couldn’t muster a top-ten finish, the women did come in 23rd overall, good for the second-highest finish in team history. Senior Florence Ngetich continued to lead the way for the Gators, running 20:24 and finishing 40th individually.
She was followed by junior Agata Strausa, senior Callie Cooper, junior Shelby Hayes, and Strasser.
Although they did not finish where they wanted to on Saturday, coach Paul Spangler was satisfied with his team’s performance.
“I’m really proud of the job they’ve done this year from winning the SEC Championship to making it to nationals as a team,” he said.
With junior Mark Parrish and sophomore Jimmy Clark—Florida’s two individual male qualifiers—finishing 174th and 196th overall, the Gators are looking to use this performance as a springboard into the upcoming indoor track season.
“I put in a good effort, so I can’t be super disappointed,” Parrish said. “It’s not what I wanted, but I’ll use that as motivation going forward into track season. I’m excited for that – it’s something different that I haven’t done in a couple of years, so that will be exciting.”
Cooper is also looking forward to the upcoming track season—her final one—and sees this race as an important team bonding experience that will provide a sense of unity.
“This year in general, we all did a great job of coming together as a team and this was the culminating point,” she said. “It’s bittersweet being my last cross country race, but I’m still really looking forward to track. Everyone is going to be in a really good place come January and track season.”
The Gators’ first indoor track meet is scheduled for January 12th and Spangler has high goals for his distance runners over the next year.
“Looking ahead, we need to help the women’s team to be in a position to contend for SEC Championships both indoors and outdoors on the track and score some points in the distance races,” he said. “With the bulk of our crew coming back and adding the All-American Cory McGee back in, we’ll have higher goals for next year and work hard during the off season to come in and have a better performance next year.”
