With the NCAA’s fall sports season finished, let’s take a look at how all the Virginia teams fared this year. In this post, I’ll focus on the cross country teams. Check the links at the bottom for previous wrap ups.

Sorry for the delay in posting the next installment of this series, but we’ve had a lot of news this month to distract us. But in the waning days of the worst January ever, reading about some successful UVa sports teams might cheer you all up. Or maybe not.

In any event, the cross country teams had very good seasons. The men’s team won the ACC championship, the women’s team enjoyed a stellar year by Emily Harrison — who finished in the top six of every race she ran in 2007, and both teams have cracked the top ten in the national rankings during the season, with the men finishing in the top-25.

Here’s a rundown of how they’ve fared in some of their key meets:

• In the Lou Onesty Invitational, which included runners from Virginia’s other public universities, Duke, and Wake Forest, the women finished first (Emily Harrison placed first) and the men finished second (Andy Biladeau placed first as well).
• In the prestigous Roy Griak Invitational, which included runners from colleges all over the country, the men’s team had a strong 5th place showing and the women’s team had an impressive 6th place showing (with Harrison placing first).
• In the NCAA Pre-Nationals, the men had a stellar fourth place finish while the women clocked in at #18 (with Harrison finishing fourth).
• In the ACC Championships, the men finished first to capture their second conference title in three years, with Biladeau finishing second overall. The women finished eighth, with Harrison finishing second overall.
• In the NCAA Southeast Regionals, the men finished fourth while the women finished sixth.
• In the NCAA Championships, the men finished twelfth (highest finish for program since 1985), while Harrison finished sixth overall in her race.

Some individual awards: Emil Heineking named to United States Track and Field/Cross Country Coaches’ Association All American team; Harrison earned NCAA All-American honors; Biladeau, Emil Heineking, Jan Foerster, and Ryan Foster earned All-Regional honors; Harrison and Stephanie Garcia earned All-Regional honors; Heineking was named the ACC Freshman of the Year; Jason Dunn Named ACC Men’s Cross Country Coach of the Year.

So, hopefully, reading about a championship here and an all All-American there helped cheer you up. A little.

Previous wrap ups:
Men’s Soccer
Women’s Soccer
Volleyball

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 12:51 pm and is filed under The Good Ol Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.