Women’s CC 11^th Nationally

The Ferris State women’s cross coun­try team placed 11^th at the national meet

The Ferris State women’s cross coun­try team fin­ished 11^th at the 2009 NCAA-II National Championships, tying the second-highest result in school history.

Junior Tina Muir led the Bulldogs with a time of 21 min­utes and 11 sec­onds, which was good enough for a 12^th-place fin­ish. She earned All-American hon­ors for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive sea­son. Muir also fin­ished 12^th at the cham­pi­onship meet last season.

“When you stand up on the stage receiv­ing the award, it makes all the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion put in through­out the year worth it,” said Muir.

The field included 184 run­ners and 24 teams, three from each of the eight major regions. More than 24 schools were rep­re­sented because some indi­vid­u­als qual­i­fied, even if their teams did not. The event took place in Evansville, Ind. and was hosted by Southern Indiana University.

The team improved on its 17^th-place fin­ish from last sea­son. The 11^th-place fin­ish is the best result the team has seen since 1987 when they fin­ished 11^th as well.

Ferris fin­ished one of its most suc­cess­ful sea­sons ever. Aside from the National Championships, the Bulldogs never fin­ished out­side the top three, includ­ing a runner-up fin­ish to Grand Valley State in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) Championships.

“The team’s suc­cess is based on the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion that each indi­vid­ual has shown through­out the year com­bined with our coach’s love for the sport,” said Muir.

Junior Paige Onweller said the course was the most dif­fi­cult of any the team has raced on this sea­son. Even so, Onweller man­aged her best time of the sea­son with a 22:54.6. Though she did not fin­ish as high as she would have liked, Onweller said she is not dis­ap­pointed because she ran her best.

“I just have to remem­ber I was rac­ing against every run­ner in the nation,” said Onweller. “This is the biggest there is, so com­pe­ti­tion is expected to be tough.”

Ferris qual­i­fied for the National Championships with a third place fin­ish at the Midwest Regional. The team was one of only two GLIAC teams to com­pete in the cham­pi­onship meet. Grand Valley State fin­ished sec­ond, behind only Division II National Champion Adams State.

Onweller and Muir agree that the team’s suc­cess is largely owed to head coach Steve Picucci. This was Picucci’s first full sea­son as the head coach. He served as the interim head coach dur­ing the 2008–2009 season.

“He instills the desire for us to want to work to become bet­ter and gives us every direc­tion we need in order to become the best we can pos­si­bly be,” said Onweller.

Looking ahead to next sea­son, the team should return the entire top seven as they each have at least one year of eli­gi­bil­ity remain­ing. The 15-member team is very young with seven fresh­men and no seniors.