Official NCAA Announcement
INDIANAPOLIS – Teams and individuals that secured automatic qualification and at-large selections were announced on Monday afternoon for the 2021 NCAA Division II Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Championships.
In order to be eligible to participate in the championships, student-athletes had to have participated in their respective NCAA regional competitions that were held this past weekend.
The Great Midwest Athletic Conference was represented tremendously for both genders following the NCAA Midwest Regional in Evansville, Ind., at Angel Mounds Course hosted by the University of Southern Indiana.
From the regionals, the top three finishing teams earned automatic qualification while the top two individuals not from those advancing teams also auto qualified. The top five individuals in each regional were also classified as automatic qualifiers.
The men will compete in a 10K race at 9:45 a.m. ET and the women’s will run a 6K at 8:30 a.m. ET in Saint Leo, Fla., on Saturday, Nov. 20, at The Abbey Course. The live telecast will be streamed on NCAA.com until the conclusion of the awards ceremony.
Men’s programs representing the Great Midwest at national will be Cedarville and Walsh. With a third-place team finish at regionals only behind Grand Valley State and Lewis, the reigning conference champion Cavaliers punched their ticket on Saturday.
Cedarville, a sixth-place finisher at regionals, had their body of work weighed during the season by the national committee. The Yellow Jackets and Cavaliers are each making their fourth team appearance at nationals while a member institution of the Great Midwest.
For Walsh, it is the team’s fourth consecutive appearance (2020 nationals was canceled) and Cedarville is making the trip for the first time since 2018.
Individually, Findlay sophomore Noah Fisher learned he would be also packing his bags for Florida. Fisher was the Great Midwest Runner of the Year and the top finishing conference runner with a time of 30:30.60 to finish eighth overall at regionals. He is just the fourth individual in conference history to earn NCAA qualifier status.
Incoming future member Northwood University also had reason to celebrate on Saturday as junior standout Zane Aldrich ran a 30:09.00 10K to finish as an automatic qualifier. The Timberwolves finished 10th as a team.
There is no question the Midwest Region is stacked for women’s programs and the Great Midwest learned three teams, Cedarville, Hillsdale and Walsh, would all be traveling as NCAA qualifiers.
The Yellow Jackets defended their home course for a conference championship title while finishing third at regionals on Saturday only behind Grand Valley State and Southern Indiana. Walsh and Hillsdale were bookends at sixth and seventh, respectively, in Evansville while both programs have been regionally and nationally ranked for some portion of the current fall season.
Walsh and Hillsdale have both made nationals in all four possible years as Great Midwest members and this will be Cedarville’s second overall, first NCAA trip since 2016, also in Saint Leo, Fla.
The conference also had two of the top performing individuals at regionals with Malone’s Mackenna Curtis-Collins and Findlay’s Gabrielle Lawrence both earning at-large selections to compete at the national level.