Martin Has Top Saint Rookie Finish, Team 7th at NCAA Championship
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Courtesy Rose-HulmanElla Martin competes in the NCAA Championship in Terre Haute
Nov. 17: Ella Martin had the best rookie finish in St. Lawrence University cross country history and the Saints recorded their third top ten finish in the last five years at the 2012 NCAA Division III Women's Cross Country Championship in Terre Haute, IN Saturday.
Martin ran 22:05.1 to finish 39th in a 277 runner field and was the top scorer for the Saints, scoring as the 25th runner in the team competition. The previous best first-year finish for a Saint athlete was Wendy Pavlus, who finished 50th running as an individual in the 2007 championships.
The Saints, who went into the race ranked sixth nationally, were hampered prior to the start of the competition when Margaret MacDonald, who has been among the top three or four for the Saints throughout the season, was unable to run due to a Friday flare-up of an injury.
Johns Hopkins won the team championship with 158 points with Wartburg second with 221, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps third with 233 and Williams fourth with 266. The Saints, the top finishers from the Atlantic Regional, finished with 297 points, six behind sixth place MIT.
Martin, who ran a 5.56 mile pace for the 6 kilometer race, was followed by senior Caroline Raue, who ran an outstanding race, finishing 69th overall and scoring 44th with a time of 22:32.3. Junior Amy Cymerman was the third Saint scorer, 108th overall and scoring 72nd with a time of 22:50.4 while grad student Lizzy Edwards was not far behind, finishing 110th and scoring 74th with a 22:50.7 time. Junior Ariel Beccia completed the Saint scoring, placing 120th overall and scoring 82nd with a 22:54.4 clocking.
Senior Jackie Lemme was the sixth Saint finisher at 154 with a 23:06.5 clocking and Anne Martino, who stepped into MacDonald's spot as an alternate, ran 27:05.4.
Martin was 25th with a 10:40.7 time at the mid-point of the race and held her own to the finish. Cymerman, the Liberty League and Atlantic Regional Champion and the Atlantic Regional Runner of the Year, was 26th at the midpoint with a 10.40.8 time, but fell back over the second half of the course. Raue, 96th in 10:59 at the mid-point moved up 27 spots over the second half of the race. Edwards maintained a solid pace throughout the race and was 94th at the midpoint while Beccia, coming off an injury, was 97th at the halfway mark.
The seventh place team finish was one spot better than a year ago when the Saints were eighth. They were second in 2009 for the other top ten in the last five years.