BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Haverford College women's cross country team had its best meet of the year at Mideast Regional on Saturday afternoon. All seven of the Fords' entrants ran a personal best over the 6,000 meter course, with each of the top five breaking the 23-minute mark. Those results led Haverford a fourth place team finish where it will now have to await the announcement of at-large bids to the NCAA Championship on Sunday afternoon.
The Fords came into the meet ranked sixth in the region, but defeated Swarthmore for the first time all season and finished just 24 points behind national No. 25 Carnegie Mellon in the final standings. No. 1 Johns Hopkins and No. 5 Dickinson claimed the top two spots and automatic bids to the national meet.
Griffin Kaulbach led the Fords to the finish as she placed 14th to earn her first All-Mideast Region honor. Moving up throughout the race, Haverford's junior was 29th at the mile split and 25th at the two-mile before passing 11 people over the final mile and a half. Kaulbach finished ninth among finishers not on qualifying teams and will need the Fords to be selected as an at-large team for her cross country season to continue at the national meet.
Hannah Doll and Sheena Dwyer-McNulty finished among the top 35 runners to earn All-Mideast honors. Doll, a two-time NCAA qualifier, ran a personal-best time of 22:35.9 to place 29th overall. The all-region honor is the second consecutive for Doll in her cross country career. Dwyer-McNulty claimed the final All-Mideast region spot in her first-year with the Fords. Finishing in a time of 22:42.5, Dwyer-McNulty placed 35th overall.
Izzy Miller and Natalia Cordon also broke the 23-minute mark in the race. Miller finished in a time of 22:46.5 to place 37th overall. Cordon placed 48th overall with her time of 22:59.2. Sitting in 81st place after the first mile, Cordon cut nearly a full minute off of her previous personal best which was set just two weeks ago at the conference championship and moved up 33 spots to finish at Haverford's fifth scorer.
Angie Petrichenko followed closely behind Cordon and just missed breaking the 23-minute mark by eight-tenths of a second. Petrichenko still shattered her PR with the effort and placed 50th overall. She was in 79th place after the first mile but gained 29 positions after that initial split. Amalia Axinn placed 75th with the team's seventh personal best of the day. Axinn crossed the line in a time of 23:23.6 as she gained five positions after the first mile split.
Women's cross country will now have to wait on Sunday's announcement of at-large bids to the NCAA Championships to learn its remaining postseason schedule. Sixteen at-large bids for those non-qualifying teams across the eight Division III regionals will be announced on Sunday, November 17 at 1 p.m. via an online press release. The NCAA Division III Cross Country Championships will be hosted in Louisville, Kentucky next Saturday, November 23.