Completed Event: Cross Country versus NCAA Championships on November 22, 2025 , , 17th / 32
Final Score
Cross Country
17th / 32
vs NCAA Championships
The University of Utah Athletics
Utah Cross Country Receives National Attention
10/6/2015 12:00 AM | Cross Country
Oct. 6, 2015
SALT LAKE CITY- The University of Utah women's cross country team garnered some national attention this week after its impressive performance last Friday at the Joe Pianne Notre Dame Invitational. The Utes jumped three spots in the Mountain Region poll to rank 4th and received 21 votes in the National Coaches' Poll, which is the most Utah has received in head coach Kyle Kepler's tenure.
"We moved up to fourth in the regional rankings, which is great," Kepler said. "New Mexico and Colorado are two of the best teams in the entire country and are in our region. We have the third-place team in our sights. We know that we are similar to them, but have to do a better job of packing up and staying together when we run. To be as close as we were to two ranked teams at Notre Dame is very encouraging and we know that we can run at that level. We rely on our first two runners (Sarah Feeny and Hannah McInturff) heavily, but if we do that too much it can cost us in some big races."
"It is the first time in my tenure here that we have received national votes at this point in the season," Kepler continued. "We have been preseason ranked and those kinds of things, but with the effort we had on Friday it is great to receive some national attention. I think the most exciting part of all of this is that we know that there is still plenty of room for improvement. It is not like we ran a perfect race and that is as good as we can be. We know that we can run better and we have had several kids go through illness and colds and that kind of thing. We have also had a few kids have heavy weeks academically, so we would like to think that some of that will settle down a little bit as we get ready for fall break. We will hopefully get through midterms unscathed and then we can focus on the championship part of the season."
The Mountain region has long been considered one of the premiere cross country regions in the nation - a team from the Mountain region has placed first or second at the NCAA Championships eight times in the last 15 years. Leading the region this season is New Mexico and Colorado, also ranked 1st and 2nd in the country.
The Utes have placed in the top five in every meet they have competed in, including two first-place performances at the Utah Open and MSU Invitational.
The Utes have just one meet remaining to prepare for the Pac-12 Championships on Oct. 30, and hope to continue their successful start to the season as they travel to Louisville, Ky. on Oct. 17 to compete at the NCAA Pre-Nationals.
Players Mentioned
/ Cross Country
Distance/CC
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