Release courtesy of Johns Hopkins Athletic Communications
LANSING, Mich. -- The fourth-ranked Johns Hopkins women's cross country team entered Saturday's 2022 NCAA Division III Championships in a somewhat unfamiliar position. Yes, the Blue Jays were ranked in the top five, but for the first time since 2011 – the year before they won their first national championship – they may not have been considered a serious threat to win the title.
For anyone who was thinking that way, a reconsideration of head coach Bobby Van Allen and his Blue Jays is in order.
Running in frigid conditions on a snow-covered course, Van Allen's Blue Jays placed two runners – graduate student Alex Ross and senior Sara Stephenson – in the top 10, got another All-America finish from senior Sydney Friedel, who placed 26th among scoring runners, and totaled 144 points to edge Chicago (147 points) for the program's third consecutive and eighth overall NCAA championship.
The eight national titles, which have all come since 2012, are the most in NCAA Division III Women's Cross Country history. Johns Hopkins had been tied with SUNY Cortland for first all-time with seven titles.
"I am just so proud of this team," Van Allen noted. "The energy and optimism was so high all year and they really executed the game plan to perfection today. Alex and Sara have been rock solid all year and both were simply amazing to give us such a low score up front."
Johns Hopkins sat firmly in third place at the 3.8K mark with Ross (4th), Stephenson (12th) and Friedel (19th) the only Blue Jays runners in the top 65. At that point, Chicago had all five of its scoring runners in the top 46 and Wartburg, which eventually finished third, was in second and had four runners in the top 23. Also at that point, Chicago (116) and Wartburg (165) sat ahead of JHU in the team scoring. That's when the Blue Jays made their move.
By the 5k mark, the two individuals who would ultimately make the difference in the team scoring for the Blue Jays, senior Katharine Priu and sophomore Paloma Hancock, had started moving forward through the pack; collectively over the 1.2k from 3.8 to 5 they jumped 27 spots to help Hopkins move past Warburg and close what was a 60-point deficit to Chicago down to 35.
Down the stretch, Ross and Stephenson locked up top 10 finishes with Ross clocking in a 22:05.8 to finish fourth among scoring runners (fifth overall), while Stephenson jumped to ninth overall and eighth among scoring runners (22:11.4). With their finishes, they become the first Blue Jay tandem to finish in the top 10 at the NCAAs.
Friedel rounded out the All-Americans for the Blue Jays with her 26th-place finish among scoring runners (30th overall) as she came across at 22:36.9.
Now essentially a two-team race for the title, both Johns Hopkins and Chicago had three runners finish in the top 32 with the Blue Jays holding a 20-pointy lead through those three. When Chicago's Katarina Biriman (39th) and Sophie Tedesco (50th) bookended Priu's 46th-place finish, the title came down the Hancock, who was locked in a pack of 20 coming through in a 10-second span between 23:04 and 23:14.
Hancock crossed comfortably at 23:08.4; as it turned out her 60th place showing among scoring runners locked down the three-point victory for the Blue Jays, who have won the last two titles by a combined five points as they narrowly edged Claremont Mudd-Scripps (130-132) in last year's championship.
"Watching them (Priu & Hancock) both just pick off girls was inspiring and definitely needed to pull the upset," Van Allen added. "They stayed focused all the way to the very end and even caught a few girls in the last 20 meters; every one of those spots made a difference."
The seven entries in the championships for the Blue Jays also included freshman Isis Diaz and Triya Roy, who crossed in 23:44.6 and 24:24.2, respectively.
With the cancellation of the 2020 season due to the COVID pandemic, Johns Hopkins has now won eight the last 10 NCAA Division III Women's Cross Country titles and has placed in the top four all 10 of those seasons with the eight titles, one runner-up finish (2018) and one fourth-place showing.
The first seven titles included dominating efforts and slim margins - titles won as the heavy favorite and titles won when the margin of error figured to be small.
Now, Van Allen and his Blue Jays have added a title that it seems nobody saw coming.