Goldrich Posts PR, Cracks Top 25 at Landmark Meet

KINGS PARK, N.Y. — Goucher's top three finishers all posted their fastest times of the season for a 6,000-meter race in leading the Gophers to a seventh-place finish at the 2015 Landmark Conference Women's Cross Country Championships, conducted today at Sunken Meadow State Park.

The first Goucher runner to cross the finish line was sophomore Soliana Goldrich (Austin, Texas/Beachwood), who was clocked at 25:30.08 and finished 25th in the field of 82 runners. After that came freshmen Emily League (Bel Air, Md./Bel Air) in 33rd place and Hannah Brogan (Chatham, N.J./Chatham) in 43rd.

This was the first 6,000-meter race all season that Goldrich completed in under 26 minutes as she bettered her previous best time of 2015 by almost 50 seconds. League took more than 11 seconds off of her PR with her time of 26:13.21; Brogan (26:37.68) chopped approximately 38 seconds off her PR.

Anna Sandacz (Jessup, Md./Annapolis Area Christian School), the only senior on Goucher's 2015 roster, turned in a time of 27:02.70, good for 49th place.

The fifth runner to figure in on the team score was junior Jonelle Palmer (Nashville, Tenn./Hume Fogg Academic Magnet) in 66th place. She recorded a time of 28:35.81, which was more than 59 seconds below her season PR.

The individual champion was Lydia Dearie from Elizabethtown, who toured the course in 23:09.54. She edged out the runner-up, teammate Casey Quinto, by 35-hundredths of a second.

The Gophers earned a team score of 180 points. They finished ahead of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (223 points) and Drew (258 points).

Up next for head coach John Caslin's squad are the NCAA Division III Mideast Regional Championships on November 14 in Newville, Pa.