October 29, 2022

The Basics

• The lead: Junior Rachel Pinho earned Third Team All-Middle Atlantic Conference honors in leading the Stevens Institute of Technology women's cross country team to eighth place Saturday at the conference championship meet.
• Location: Union Canal Tunnel Park  - Lebanon, Pa.
• Short Story: Using a 6:24.6 mile pace, Pinho completed the six-kilometer course in a personal-best time of 23:54.7 to lead Stevens' six-runner contingent, finishing 21st out of 135 runners. The Bridgewater, New Jersey native earned the women's cross country program's fifth All-MAC accolade. Pinho also missed out on second-team all-conference recognition by just five hundredths-of-a-second. As a team, the Ducks finished eighth out of the 16 competing teams, totaling 216 points. The Ducks improved their finish by two places from the 2021 conference championship meet. 
• Of note: Widener won the team championship for the first time, totaling 40 points to finish comfortably ahead of Misericordia (101). Widener averaged 23:09 to finish the course and scored three of the top-five finishes. The Pride's Gabriella Nye won the individual championship, averaging 6:02.1 per mile to complete the course in 22:30.6 and was named the MAC's Runner of the Year. Lebanon Valley's Coyla Bartholomew was tabbed the MAC's Rookie of the Year, while Widener's Logan Stroman was named Coach of the Year to round out the individual awards.
• Also of note: The top 10 finishers were named First Team All-MAC, while the 11th through 20th-place finishers landed on the league's Second Team. Runners in 21st through 30 earned third-team recognition to complete the All-Conference honors. 

The Finishes

• Stevens' top-five finishers were spread by 2:04 seconds.
• The Ducks averaged 25:12 to complete the course, which was 21 seconds faster than their completion time at the DeSales Invitational earlier this month. The time was also three seconds faster than the team that finished directly above the Ducks in the standings.
• Junior Fionna Feerick was the Ducks' second finisher, using a 6:44.2 mile pace to complete the course in season-best time of 25:07.7.
• First-year Taylor Enes was the team's third finisher, completing the course in a personal-best time of  25:21.5, trimming over 30 seconds off her previous career mark.
• Graduate student Caroline Corr used a 6:51.3 mile pace to complete the course in 25:34 to post the second-fastest 6k time of her career.
• Junior Jacqueline Lulaj rounded out the scoring runners, finishing 69th with a time of 25:58.7
• First-year Christina Alexandrov rounded out the Ducks' contingent of runners, completing the course in 28:35 in just her second career six-kilometer race.

From the Course - Head Coach John Kolibab

• "I'm incredibly proud of how our group has competed this entire season. We knew we had the talent to improve upon our results from last season's championship and we've been looking forward to this meet ever since. I am very happy to say that we had a successful outing, which was great to see as my first championship meet as head coach."
• "Losing our top two runners from last season was really tough and we knew we were facing an uphill battle to improve on last season's tenth-place finish. We also had a slew of injuries this season, and at times, we only had the minimum numbers of runners (5) to score in meets. Despite all of this, our women were still able to improve, finishing the meet with an eighth-place finish. We have more first-years on our squad this year than returners, which sets us up very well to continue our rise for seasons to come."

Up Next

• Women's cross country returns to the course on Nov. 12 for the Metro Region Championship, which will be hosted by DeSales University on its campus course.

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