Titans Take 16th Place At NCAA Championship

Christy Cazzola (So. • Kaukauna) ran to All-America honors as the UW-Oshkosh women's cross country team finished 16th at the NCAA Division III Championship held Saturday (Nov. 20) at the Max Cross Country Course in Waverly, Iowa.

Middlebury College (Vt.), which didn't have a runner finish in the top 39 of the individual listings, scored 185 points to tally its sixth national title. The Panthers' point total was the highest by a winning team in the 30-year history of the meet.

Washington University (Mo.) finished second in the 32-team meet with 193 points, while Massachusetts Institute of Technology placed third with 214, defending champion UW-Eau Claire fourth with 218 and Williams College (Mass.) fifth with 230.

Competing the order of teams in the top 10 were sixth-place Luther College (Iowa) with 249 points, seventh-place Johns Hopkins University (Md.) with 265, eighth-place Amherst College (Mass.) with 294, ninth-place Calvin College (Mich.) with 354 and 10th-place University of Chicago (Ill.) with 366. UW-Oshkosh took 16th place with 444 points.

Cazzola, who finished 37th and just behind the All-America cut (35th place) in 2008, placed fourth in this year's 6,000-meter race with a time of 21:18. Cazzola didn't compete for the Titans in 2009.

Wendy Pavlus of St. Lawrence University (N.Y.) recorded a time of 20:49 to capture the individual title for the second straight year. Jennifer Gossels of Williams College finished second among the meet's 279 runners with a time of 21:00, while Jenny Scherer of St. Norbert College placed third in 21:08 and Paige Mills of Keene State College (N.H.) fifth in 21:22.