Gophers women’s cross country concluded the 2024 season with an 18th-place finish at the NCAA Championships in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday.
Minnesota competed with 30 other NCAA cross-country programs and surpassed their pre-NCAA Championships ranking of 23rd by five spots. The Gophers placed better than Wisconsin and Utah, who were ranked in the top 15 nationally before the meet.
The women’s team’s 18th-place finish comes after two years of missing out on nationals, with their last appearance being a seventh-place finish in 2021.
The Gophers’ finish landed within junior Ali Weimer’s definition of a competitive NCAA Championship performance. She said it was the team’s goal as a self-considered “nationals caliber team” to qualify for nationals and perform above expectations.
“Not just qualifying but competing for a top 15, top 20 spot and not just finishing last,” Weimer said.
Weimer finished in 48th place as the Gophers’ top finisher, making her the team’s top women’s runner at every meet this season. Weimer’s rank was the best from a Gophers junior or younger since 2010, and her time of 20:10.5 was the fifth-fastest NCAA Championships 6K time in program history.
Graduate Emma Atkinson finished second for the Gophers in 93rd place out of the 255 runners. Sophomores Nadia Phillips, Izzy Roemer and senior Erin Reidy finished in the top 150 as Phillips and Roemer crossed the finish line at 148th and 149th, respectively.
The NCAA Championships was not Minnesota’s first run at the Thomas Zimmer Championship Course in Madison, Wisconsin. The team raced there a month prior in its 13th place finish at the Pre-Nationals meet. However, nine teams at the NCAA Championships did not compete in Pre-Nationals.
Before nationals, Gophers head coach Sarah Hopkins said the familiarity with the course and midwestern conditions helped Minnesota. Hopkins said for a team like Alabama, which did not race in the Pre-Nationals meet, the weather could cause problems.
“Sometimes when you go to a completely different place just unknown makes you a little more nervous,” Hopkins said.
Alabama was consistently ranked seventh through the second half of the season but dropped to 10th at the NCAA Championships.
Hopkins said the team showed more depth this season compared to others at Minnesota’s last NCAA Championships three years ago, where three of the team’s top five finishers were graduates and two were seniors.
Comparatively, three of the Gophers’ top five finishers at nationals were sophomores and juniors. Isabelle Schmitz, who was Minnesota’s seventh and final finisher at nationals, is a freshman.
“We’ve got this young core that isn’t going to just evaporate over the next couple of years which I think will hopefully allow this success to keep building over the next several years too,” Hopkins said.
