CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Carleton College women’s cross country team placed 11th out of 32 teams at the 2009 NCAA Division III Cross Country Championships. Leading the way for the Knights were sophomore Simone Childs-Walker (Seattle, Wash./Lakeside) and senior Laura Roach (Lakeville, Minn./Lakeville North) who both earned USTFCCCA All-American status by finishing 11th and 25th respectively during the competition.

“This was a wonderful finish to a pretty incredible season,” said head coach Donna Ricks. “We’ve had lots of support from outside the program all year, and that’s really helped us out. Everyone from parents to former team members to the trainers have had a hand in our success.

“This was a very challenging course. It was really wet when went out on Thursday, but it dried out some over the last two days. Our kids were very smart about their race structure. You needed to go out smart so that you had energy to run down people over the last mile, and that’s exactly what they did.”

Childs-Walker crossed the finish line at 22:27.4, the top time posted by an underclassman. Building on the experience gained from running at nationals last fall, she moved up 50 places in the standings. She became an All-American for the fourth time to go along with her 2009 performances in indoor and outdoor track. She joins Anna Prineas ’89 as the only Knight women to earn All-American distinction in cross country, indoor track and field, and outdoor track and field. Childs-Walker is just the 10th Carleton women to earn at least four All-American honors in any sport.

This was the third trip to the NCAA Championships for Roach, who earned All-American honors for the first time. She traversed the six-kilometer route at Highland Park Golf Course in 22:39.3, holding off Dana Misterek of Whitworth University at the line.

“I knew (the soft course) would take a lot out of everybody’s legs. I went out with the pack and relaxed in the first half and then started moving up,” Roach said. She moved from 60th to 25th over the later portion of the race.

Sophomore Alison Smyth (Billings, Mont./Billings West) was next to finish for Carleton, posting a time of 23:40.5, good for 103rd out of 279 racers. Taylor Ffitch (So./Portland, Ore./St. Mary’s Academy) and Nikki Reich (Sr./Appleton, Wis./Appleton North) rounded out the scoring for Carleton, which totaled 357 points.

The Knights entered the day ranked No. 12 in the USTFCCCA national poll and were once again able to edge regional foe Nebraska Wesleyan, which concluded the race with 365 points.

While the Knights will graduate three racers from the seven-person squad for this year’s national meet, the other four runners were sophomores, already raising expectations for Carleton in 2010.

“The whole season has brought us together,” Roach said. “We’ve had a lot of different things going on, but we kept performing well. We knew going into nationals that would be to our benefit.

“The sophomores really stepped up today. They had much better races than last year, and they knew better what to expect.”

permalink