Results

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The UMass Lowell women's cross country team's season came to an end with a 31st place finish in a field of 37 teams, Friday morning, at the 6k NCAA Northeast Regional Championships.

"It was a tough day," said UMass Lowell Cross Country Head Coach Gary Gardner.  "I don't know if it was the conditions or inexperience or what, but things did not work for us."

Harvard put five runners in the top 26 and won the team championship with 92-points (3, 18, 22, 24, 26 - 37, 123).  Cornell with 126-points was second, Boston College finished third, 133-points.  The River Hawks placed 31st with 886-points (134, 168, 179, 200, 205 - 208, 219).

"As a coach, some days everything goes right and then there are some days where nothing works and everything goes wrong," according to Gardner.  "It was one of those days where everybody had an off day on the same day."

Albany senior Hannah Reinhardt won the individual title completing the 6k course in a time of 19-minutes, 28.4-seconds.  Reinhardt two weeks earlier had won the America East Championship.

The race was run on the campus of the host school after officials determined, earlier in the week, that the cross country course at the Audubon Golf Club was, the result of snow earlier in the week, too treacherous to host the competition.  The campus course was only defined less than 24-hours before the run.  The end result was a course that was more typical of road races than cross country events.

The run in Buffalo was one of nine regional meets spread across the country.  The top two finishing teams, in each region, go to the National Championship meet in Terre Haute, Indiana.  Thirteen additional teams are selected at large.  The top four finishing individual runners in each region, not on a team selected for the finals, are also invited to compete at the National Championship.

UMass Lowell's top scoring runner was junior Emily Sessa (Tewksbury, Mass.)  She punched the clock at 21:50.2.  It was good for 134th place in a field of nearly 270 runners.  Sessa, a middle distance runner by trade, has developed during the season into a strong cross country runner.

Sophomore Izzy Giesing (Bradford, Vermont), in her first season of cross country competition, was the second River Hawk finisher.  She clocked in with a time of 22:23.9.

Sophomore Sarah Burns (Billerica, Mass.) hit the finish line in a time of 22:37.1.  She was the third River Hawk scorer finishing 179th among scoring runners.

Graduate student Nicole Murphy (Mendon, Mass.) running in her final cross country race of her collegiate career finished 200th with a time of 22:56.3.

Junior Jenna Solimine (Haverhill, Mass.) was the final UMass Lowell scorer.  She crossed the finish line at 23:00.3.

Junior Amanda Baptiste (Taunton, Mass.) and sophomore Olivia Sheffield (Lowell, Mass.) rounded out the top seven for UMass Lowell.  They posted times of 23:03.5 and 23:29.9 respectively.

For the River Hawks, this regional brings the 2019 cross country season to a close.  The Track and Field season is less than a month away.