In its final meet of the season, Northwestern ran to a 15th-place finish at the 25-team NCAA Midwest Regional Cross Country Championships on Saturday in Peoria.
The Wildcats were led for the second straight race by junior Allison King, who came in 78th with a time of 22:04 for the 6K. After missing most of the season with a hearing-related ailment, King came back to finish tops on the team at both the Big Ten Championships and NCAA Regionals for the second year in a row.
King was followed immediately by fellow junior Marcellee Fullwood, who also ran a 22:04 and placed 79th. It was easily a career day for Fullwood, who was running in her first NCAA Regional after only breaking into the Cats’ top-seven earlier this season. Sophomore Paulina Garcia was third for NU, 89th overall at 22:19.
“Marcellee Fullwood had an extraordinary race,” NU coach April Likhite said. “She and Allison King worked together really well. And just looking back at seeing her progress (this season), there’s no telling what she’s capable of doing, and it’s exciting that we have her for one more year.”
Though the race results did mark an improvement over last year’s 17th place finish, NU had hoped for a slightly better result than 15th.
The Cats entered the meet ranked 12th in the region and was hoping to land at least in the top-12.
Two of NU’s top runners for much of the season – senior Celia Franklin and junior Carly Brown – struggled through tough races and wound up 114th and 178th, respectively. As the sixth- and seventh-place runners on the team, neither of their scores contributed to the Cats’ total.
“We had two girls that did not have good races and we’re not that talented of a team to be able to afford that,” Likhite said. “But five of our girls had good races.”
When NU competed on the same course earlier in the fall at the Bradley Classic, the team took third in a field of 17. In that race Brown ran a 21:38, while at Regionals she crossed the line in 26:52.
“We’re going to try to figure out what’s going on (with Brown),” Likhite said. “That’s two races in a row, and her workouts have been great, so we’re going to have to put our heads together to figure out what’s going on with racing at the big meets.”
Illinois State, a team that NU had already defeated twice earlier this season, placed one spot ahead of the Cats with 389 points. Though Likhite said her team was definitely focusing on the competition and especially on beating Illinois State, they were going to need exceptional races from all seven runners to prevail for a third time.
“The girls knew what we needed to do (to beat Illinois State),” Likhite said. “But with who we thought was our number one person not there, there was no way we could have beaten them.”
Reach Ben Larrison at [email protected].
