While Saturday's NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional marked the end of the cross country season for most of the men's and women's teams, junior Stacy Kim has one more race on her schedule.
Her time of 20:56.6 was good enough for sixth place and a berth in the NCAA National Championship taking place Nov. 20 in Terre Haute, Indiana, hosted by Indiana State.
Kim got off to a relatively quick start and hovered around ninth place for much of the race until she crept up to sixth toward the end.
"The race went as it went and I didn't make a lot of mistakes," she said. "I didn't try to make a lot of big moves."
The women's team finished in seventh place overall out of 28 teams, while the men came in eighth out of 25.
The top two teams - Princeton and Georgetown from the women's race and Georgetown and American from the men's - advance their full teams to the National Championship, as do the top 4 finishers from each Regional Championship not from those teams.
Kim, who felt that she ran "a really solid race," qualified by finishing third out of runners from other schools, about 54 seconds behind winner Francis Koons, a Villanova junior.
Kim was followed by the only other runner to have been the top Penn scorer in a race this year, her twin-sister Claire, who finished 29th. The rest of the women's team finished in the middle of the pack, led by their only graduating senior.
"Our lone senior Tina Morrison stepped up really excellently today to keep us in the hunt," coach Gwen Harris said.
Morrison's third-place finish among her teammates was her best of the year. Prior to this race, she had scored no better than fifth among Penn runners.
The men were led by junior Brian Goldberg, whose 31:27.3 was good for 29th place. He was followed by senior Ian Foley in 35th place and junior Reid McEwan in 41st.
Both teams hope to improve for next year as the men lose only two of their scoring runners, while the women lose just one.
"We only lose one person, so we should be ready to roll next year," Harris said.
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