Women's Cross Country Dominates Meet of Champions

Friday, September 15

New Rochelle, NY

TBA

Army West Point

Iona Meet of Champions

Women's Cross Country Dominates Meet of Champions

September 15, 2023 | Women's Cross Country

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. – The Army West Point women's cross country team won the Meet of Champions hosted by Iona on Friday morning. They won with a score of 22. Second place was Johns Hopkins 40 points back with 62.

Georgia Jones led the way winning the race with a time of 17:36.7. Five more Black Knights rounded out the top 10. Charlotte Richman came in third (18:10.8), Joanna Halfhill came in fifth (18:18.6), Lena Kieffer was right behind her in sixth (18:19.3), Claire Lewis was seventh (18:30.0), and Louisa Diamond (18:30.5) rounded out the Black Knights top 10 finishers.

The Black Knights average time of 18:12 was 31 seconds faster than any other team in the event.

They now turn their focus to the Paul Short Invitational on Sep. 30 at Lehigh.

COACHES CORNER

Head Coach Mike Smith: "The women raced well today. They were aggressive and patient. They were disciplined and smart. And most importantly, they were confident. This team has really started to connect the dots when it comes to training and now we are seeing that connection applied to the races. It was impressive to see the line of Army women charging to the finish line today. Army teams have run at this course (Van Cortlandt Park) since the start of the women's program back in the early 1980's. The course is the most demanding and difficult course that we will run the entire season. It is hilly, the footing is rife with loose gravel and sand and the constant up and downs followed by a sharp turn prevents any sense of rhythm. You have to be gritty, strong and determined in order to be successful. I felt like we were all of those things today. Georgia was in command from the start and the rest of our team ran with a sense of purpose, focus and discipline. We have had a large training block leading up to this weekend so I could tell a number of the women were itching to race and today we satisfied that itch. This is the first win for our women at this meet since 2012. We won convincingly and we did it with both our talent and our depth. Our top two runners today ran faster than any Army woman has ever run on the Van Cortlandt Park course….and we had six women run a time today faster than the all-time number four on this course. That pretty much tells the story of today. We were good. We have some areas where we can improve, and we will tackle those things in training over the next few weeks. We are in a good spot as we look to take on the greater challenges of the championship season. "