Sept. 14, 2006
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – The Notre Dame men’s and women’s cross country teams will play host to the first of their two home meets this year when the 27th annual National Catholic Cross Country Championship takes place Friday afternoon at the nine-hole Notre Dame Golf Course on the Notre Dame campus. The meet will begin with the women’s varsity race, a 5K affair, starting at 4:15 p.m. (EDT), and the men’s five-mile competition in the 5 p.m. nightcap, with free admission for both races. Spectators are encouraged to arrive early, as the Notre Dame campus likely will be congested with visitors in town for this weekend’s Notre Dame-Michigan football game.
The National Catholic Championship is the brainchild of current Notre Dame men’s cross country coach Joe Piane, who first debuted the meet in 1980 as a event featuring prominent Catholic institutions from throughout the United States. A women’s race was added in 1984 and both events have been run annually since then. The Notre Dame men have won 17 team titles in the first 26 years of the meet (including 15 of the past 18 championships), while the Irish women have earned 12 team crowns (all in the past 14 years). Notre Dame is the four-time defending women’s champion, with current junior Sunni Olding (Minster, Ohio/Minster) the reigning individual medalist, while Duquesne wrestled the men’s team title from Notre Dame with a slim one-point win last year, despite an individual victory from current Irish sophomore Patrick Smyth (Salt Lake City, Utah/Judge Memorial).
The Notre Dame men come into Friday’s meet ranked 12th in the nation, according to the preseason poll released earlier this week by the United States Track & Field/Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA). The Irish opened their season last week with a comfortable 28-point victory at the six-team Crusader Invitational in Valparaiso, Ind., putting seven runners among the top 11 in the field. This week’s National Catholic Championship should prove to be a stronger test with a larger field that includes participants from 32 different schools (split between 12 Division I institutions and 20 College Division representatives). Although no other attendees are ranked nationally in the USTFCCCA poll, Duquesne is slotted seventh in the first Mid-Atlantic Region poll of the year. Notre Dame’s BIG EAST Conference brethren, Marquette and DePaul, also will compete in this week’s National Catholic Championship — Marquette finished eighth and DePaul was 14th at last year’s BIG EAST Championship, which was won by the Irish for the second consecutive year and fifth time since joining the conference in 1995-96.
Notre Dame will field a very young nine-man lineup for Friday’s National Catholic meet, with four freshmen and two sophomores highlighting the Irish contingent. Among the rookies making their college debuts this week are Brock Hagerman (Markleville, Ind./Pendleton Heights), the reigning Indiana state champion and a three-time all-state pick who was undefeated as a high school senior; Greg Kiley (Saratoga Springs, N.Y./Saratoga Springs), who was the No. 2 runner on last year’s high school national championship squad; and Jake Walker (Ellwood City, Pa./Lincoln), a two-time participant at the Foot Locker Northeast Cross Country Regional. Sophomore Kevin McFadden (New Tripoli, Pa./Allentown Central Catholic), a third-place finisher at last week’s 6K Crusader Invitational (19:27), headlines the Notre Dame veteran corps, along with junior Brett Adams (Davenport, Iowa/Assumption), who gets his first start of the year and comes off a fourth-place finish at last year’s National Catholic Championship.
Meanwhile, the Notre Dame women kicked off their 2006 season with a second-place finish at last week’s Crusader Invitational, ending up one point back of the host school, Valparaiso. The Irish received votes in the USTFCCCA preseason poll, and enter Friday’s competition ranked seventh in the Great Lakes Region. Among the featured squads in the 34-team National Catholic Championship women’s field (12 Division I entries and 22 College Division institutions) are a pair of BIG EAST schools — Marquette, which is ranked 18th in the nation according to the USTFCCCA poll and a third-place finisher at the 2005 conference meet, and DePaul, which placed 13th at last year’s BIG EAST Championship, an event won by Notre Dame for the third time in the past four seasons.
Making her season debut, Olding will lead the Irish lineup at the National Catholic Championship, looking to become just the second two-time winner in the 22-year history of the women’s race, and first since Notre Dame’s JoAnna Deeter won four in a row from 1996-99. The two-time All-American will be joined by a sizeable contingent of upperclassmen, including senior Ann Mazur (Pittsburgh, Pa./Seton-LaSalle), who was 11th at last year’s National Catholic Championship, and junior Julie Opet (Wayne, Pa./Radnor), the top Irish finisher at the 4K Crusader Invitational with a third-place showing in 14:45. In addition, two interesting story lines to follow will be the performances of freshman Lindsey Ferguson (Greenfield Center, N.Y./Saratoga Springs), who was a three-time top-30 finisher at the Foot Locker National Cross Country Championship and a member of the three-time prep national champions, and junior Jacqueline Carter (Boise, Idaho/Bishop Kelly), who set a school record on the track last year in the indoor 800 meters, but has not raced on the cross country circuit since her freshman year, when her best outing was a first-place finish in the 2004 National Catholic Championship JV race.
A complete printable list of the entrants for the National Catholic Championship also is available in a PDF file on the official Notre Dame athletics web site (www.und.com). Final results from the meet will be distributed shortly after the conclusion of the day’s races, both on the official Notre Dame athletics web site, as well as the Notre Dame Sports Hotline (574-631-3000). Fans also can get immediate results on their cell phones via the new Irish ALERT text message service, with more details available here.
— ND —