After its race Saturday morning, the UCLA men’s cross country team could only wait until Sunday evening to learn their fate.
The NCAA selection committee convened last night to select the field for the NCAA Championships, which will be held in two weeks in Terre Haute, Ind. The top two finishers in each of the nine regional races received automatic bids while the 13 at-large bids were determined by the committee.
With their impressive performance this weekend, the Bruins were selected for one of those bids. UCLA will be joined by six other teams from the West Region. Last year, the Bruins were passed over for an at-large bid to the championship meet after they were one point shy of the necessary sixth-place finish.
The No. 26 Bruins finished sixth at this year’s West Region Championship Saturday in Palo Alto with 145 points. The West Region is one of the most competitive regions which made for a very tough race.
No. 1 Oregon took the home the title with No. 3 Stanford coming in second to receive automatic bids. No. 4 Portland, No. 20 California and No. 23 Washington rounded out the top five teams of 25 teams.
Leading the way for the UCLA was its usual duo of seniors Laef Barnes and Drew Shackleton. Both earned All-West Region honors with their top-25 individual performances of the 174-runner field.
Barnes was the No. 1 runner for the Bruins and finished the 10k course 16th overall at a time of 29:31.49. Barnes was coming off an injury he suffered two weeks ago at the Pac-10 Championships to bounce back to the top spot on the team. He suffered abdominal pain that led to back spasms but was in great health this past weekend.
Shackleton, who earned All-Pac-10 Honors two weeks ago, came behind Barnes in 22nd place at 29:47.03.
For the women’s team, their season came to an end with a 17th-place finish at Regionals.
No. 1 Washington won the region followed by No. 2 Oregon, No. 11 Stanford, and No. 16 Arizona State.
Freshman Katja Goldring was the No. 1 runner for UCLA with a 73rd-place finish with a time of 21:47.49 over the 8k course.
Sophomore Kelcie Wiemann was the No. 2 runner in 84th place overall at 21:54.63. Freshman Shelby Buckley finished right behind Wiemann in 85th (21:55.83) with sophomore Shannon Murakami (87th, 21:59.01) and senior Ciara Viehweg (99th, 22:06.79) completed the scoring group for the Bruins.
The young group of runners gained valuable experience this season that they will be able to use for 2009. Mostly running freshman and sophomores the entire season, the team greatly improved. Finishing 17th this year at Regionals was a big jump from their 23rd-place finish a year ago.
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