Nov. 15, 2012

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—The Virginia men’s cross country team and graduate student Catherine White of the women’s squad travel to Louisville, Ky., to compete at the NCAA Cross Country Championships Saturday (Nov. 17) at the E.P. ‘Tom’ Sawyer State Park.

The women’s 6K championship will start at noon, while the men’s 10k championship will begin at 1:15 p.m.

The Cavalier men qualified for the national meet as a result of winning their first ever NCAA Southeast Regional Championship last Friday (Nov. 9) in Charlotte, N.C. White, a native of Roanoke, Va., earned her spot at the meet by way of finishing fourth at the regional race.

At the Southeast regional, graduate student Zach Gates (Fishers, Ind.) finished fourth to lead the men in 29:43.08, while redshirt freshman Kyle King (Yorktown, Va.) crossed the line 10th in 30:02.13.

Junior Thomas Porter (Fredericksburg, Va.) placed 14th in 30:24.73, while grad student Mark Amirault (Walpole, Mass.) and sophomore Drew Paisley (Virginia Beach, Va.) finished 17th and 19th, respectively, to round out the scoring five. The men’s top five finishers all earned All-Southeast Region honors.

The men return to the national meet as a team for the first time since 2010 and have sent at least an individual to the national meet for tenth consecutive season. Last year, Amirault ran as an individual and earned All-America honors after finishing 27th.

The highest finish for a Cavalier male individual was a 19th-place finish by Timothy Springfield in 1984. The men’s highest team finish was the same year, 1984, a fifth-place tally.

White returns to the national cross country meet for the first time since 2009, when she finished fourth. That fourth-place finish is the highest mark for a Cavalier woman since Lesley Welch’s national championship in 1981. The women have sent at least an individual to the NCAA meet every year since 2004.