• NCAA Championships Timing Site
The NCAA Division I Cross Country National Championship will be contested on Saturday in Louisville and feature the
Eastern Kentucky women's team, Tennessee Tech's
Purity Sanga and UT Martin's
Edwin Kurgat.
The national championships will be at E.P. 'Tom' Sawyer State Park with the women's 6K race at 9 a.m. ET and the men's 10K race scheduled to go off at 10 a.m. ET.
The Eastern Kentucky University women's cross country team is ranked No. 25 by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) entering this weekend's National Championship meet.
EKU is the first women's team in OVC history to qualify for the Cross Country National Championship. The Colonels were third at the Southeast Regional to earn an at-largeth berth to the Championship.
The team is led by junior All-American
Charlotte Imer, the OVC Athlete of the Yeare, who was third at the regionals with a 6K time of 20:15.1. It will mark the second-straight year Imer has participated in the National Championship, as she earned at at-large berth in 2016 and finished 31st nationally. Imer is only the second OVC female to run in the National Championship more than once (joining Samford's Lauren Blankenship who competed three times).
Sanga, the OVC Freshman of the Year, finished sixth at the OVC Championship and was eighth at the NCAA South Regional with a time of 20:16.4, which established a new school record. The eighth-place finish was the highest-ever for a TTU athlete (male or female). She is the first Tennessee Tech athlete to qualify for the National Championship meet and is just the eighth different OVC female athlete to earn an at-large berth to the National Championship.
Her selection marked the fourth-consecutive year a female runner has earned a berth in the National Championship.
Kurgat won the OVC Championship and then earned at at-large berth after finishing eighth in the NCAA South Regional with a 10K personal-best time of 30:28.0. He is the first UT Martin athlete to compete in the Cross Country National Championship race, and first non-EKU male runner to compete at the National Championship since 2013. During the year Kurgat notched six of the top seven times in UTM program history.