#TCCWXC: Eagles close inaugural season at NJCAA Championships
EL DORADO, Kan. (November 12, 2016) – Tallahassee Community College's women's cross country team closed its first season of competition on Saturday at the NJCAA Division I Cross Country Championships.
Butler (Kan.) Community College hosted the event, which featured 37 women's teams and more than 300 runners from across the country.
Tallahassee placed 33rd but the stat sheet didn't tell the full story, according to head coach Gary Droze.
"Given that our season started with less than a full squad of girls who had previous running experience, I feel they made tremendous strides in order to be able to compete at a national-level event just three months later," said Droze. "For those running next season, intimidation will not be a factor at a national championship. They ran fearlessly today."
Individually, Samantha Reilly was the Eagles' top runner, finishing 128th with a personal-best time of 20:40.96, which is now established as the school record in the 5K. Reilly also finished second among all runners from Region 8, a four-spot improvement from last week's NJCAA Region 8/FCSAA State Cross Country Championship, where she took sixth place.
Mia Wiederkehr was the next Tallahassee runner to cross the finish line, doing so in 21:41.41, good for 196th.
Completing the scoring for Tallahassee were Monet Madeux, who PRd with a time of 22:09.04 (222nd place), Ashley Jones (23:21.62, 261st) and Ellie Stubblefield (24:19.97, 284th), who took four seconds off her previous best time.
Jeanna Prisco ran a personal-best 25:05.47 and Regan Ward crossed the stripe in 27:30.94.
Tallahassee will run its final event of the fall next Saturday, the NJCAA Half Marathon, in Gulf Shores, Ala.
