Final Results (PDF)
All-Conference Team (PDF)
Photo Gallery
TIFFIN, Ohio – In socially-distanced space, the entire field gave it their all on the course as the Great Midwest Athletic Conference Women’s Cross Country Championships were successfully completed on Saturday morning.
The Seneca Hills Golf Course served as the site for the league’s lone fall championship event with 10 teams and 114 individuals in the field.
Temperatures were tolerable but still didn’t quite get to 50 degrees as they completed three loops in the 6K layout.
The top four individuals were balanced from four different schools and some of the more familiar names in the conference noticeably pushed each other to the very end as they crossed the line in order.
Defending her title as individual champion was Malone’s Mackenna Curtis-Collins, who successfully repeated after dominating last year’s championship meet at the Laurel School-Butler Campus.
Curtis-Collins, a senior, edged out a few of her upperclassmen counterparts, including runner-up Alexa Leppelmeier (Walsh), Maryssa Depies (Hillsdale) and Findlay’s standout junior Gabrielle Lawrence.
That trio came into the meet with a majority share of the top five 6K marks recorded around the league during the fall season. Depies and Lawrence are also previous Great Midwest Freshmen of the Year, respectively.
Curtis-Collins would end up pulling away by a little more than six seconds down the straightaway with a time of 21:24.20. She nearly mirrored her time from the 2019 NCAA Championships in California, good for a spot in the conference’s 25 all-time best.
The Cavaliers really made it count with four of the top five placewinners in fifth through ninth place. Head coach Rob Mizicko was very pleased with Claire Robertson earning a top-5 finish, sophomore Bridget Hahn one spot behind her and Alyssa Viscounte and Teja Young going back-to-back for eighth and ninth.
Young was pronounced Great Midwest Freshman of the Year as the highest finishing first-year runner and if previous winners are any indication of how careers will progress, hers will be a bright one.
Walsh has gone back-and-forth with rival Hillsdale since both institutions joined the conference in 2017. Hillsdale had the first team victory, Walsh stole the show in 2018, Hillsdale went back on top last year and this year, it was the Cavaliers’ turn.
Hillsdale was this year’s runner-up and kept the pressure on Walsh as Depies and senior Christina Sawyer placed in the top 10. The Chargers and Cavaliers have been ranked side-by-side in the region and national rankings and both programs have ample NCAA Championship experience since joining the Great Midwest.
The top 20 finishers took their place in the awards area with official all-conference team designation. The first group of 10 were presented with first team all-conference medals and the second set of 10 earned second team.
A handful of traditional individual awards were also announced along with the introduction of the Elite 23 Award, presented to a student-athlete with the highest GPA (of at least sophomore classification) running in Saturday’s race.
The inaugural award went to Julia Losasso of Walsh as the Cavaliers enjoyed more hardware. Losasso is a senior majoring in Pre-Law with a perfect 4.00 GPA. She edged a handful of other student-athletes with perfect 4.00 GPA’s by virtue of a tiebreaker with the most credit hours achieved during her undergraduate studies.
Mizicko won his third Great Midwest Women’s Cross Country Coach of the Year award as votes were turned in by other competing schools. He also won in 2017 and 2018 while serving his ninth year of leadership at the helm of the program.