A race dominated by Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference talent featured one Fort Lewis College runner.
FLC’s Christian Gering finished his Division II cross country career with a 116th-place finish in the 245-competitor field at the NCAA Division II Championship race Saturday at Tom Sawyer Park in Louisville, Kentucky.
Gering, a 5-6, 137-pound senior from San Felipe Pueblo, New Mexico, finished the 9,560-meter race in 32 minutes, 36.2 seconds. The race was shortened from the standard 10-kilometer distance because of “extreme wet conditions.”
It was the third consecutive season Gering reached the NCAA Championship. In 2013, he finished 80th with a time of 31:57.6 on the 10K course in Spokane, Washington. A year earlier, he helped FLC to a 23rd-place team finish while running a personal best 31:09.2 at the championship in Joplin, Missouri.
Adams State finished first in the men’s race Saturday with a team score of 69 points. The team from Alamosa picked up its third consecutive men’s national title and 11th overall NCAA Division II National Championship. It is the program’s 23rd national title overall.
“They really performed unbelievably well. They definitely brought their ‘A’ game,” Adams State head coach Damon Martin said after the meet. “From top to bottom, the entire team gave everything they had.”
Adams State senior Tabor Stevens repeated as the men’s individual champion with a time of 30:02. He now is the second-most decorated runner in NCAA Division II history with national championship race finishes of 11th, third, first and first in his four years at Adams State.
“You can always count on Tabor. He stuck to his plan (Saturday) of hanging with the guys before taking off to finish strong,” Martin said.
Grand Valley State finished second with 127 team points and Augustana, South Dakota placed third with 135. Two more RMAC teams, Colorado Mines and Western State, rounded out the top five, with Colorado Mines scoring 144 and Western State scoring 185.
Colorado Mesa placed 18th with 507 points and UC-Colorado Springs took 23rd with 654.
Grand Valley State won the women’s 5.78-kilometer race with 50 points and the first three racers to cross the line. Kendra Foley, a sophomore, won the individual national title in a time of 21:05.80.
Adams State placed fourth in the women’s race with 125 points, led by Jenna Thurman’s sixth-place finish in 21:26.10. Colorado Mines finished 10th with 342 points, Western State took 16th with 419, UC-Colorado Springs took 20th with 512, Colorado Mesa was 22nd with 525, and Metro State was 23rd with a score of 555.
Next for FLC is the inaugural women’s indoor track and field season.
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