Cross Country Takes 11th at Regionals

Abbott leads team at NCAA regional meet.

Utah cross country took 11th at the NCAA Regional meet this morning.
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Nov. 11, 2006

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Without it's No. 1 runner, the University of Utah cross country team persevered at the NCAA Regional meet, taking 11th on the 6k course here on the campus of the University of New Mexico this morning.

The Utes missed a top-10 finish by only 13 points, chalking up 301 points today. They were led by the effort of freshman Alyssa Abbott. She checked in at 46th in 22:35.9. This year's showing was six places and 95 points better than last year's performance.

"I'm very proud of everyone on this team," said head coach Kyle Kepler. "We didn't run our No. 1 (Rebecca Mackelprang) because we thought it would be better to rest her since she had been injured and she wasn't in race shape.

"But, it was another freshman, Alyssa (Abbott), that stepped up and really came through for the team. Chelsea DiGrazia and Lauren Endersen also stepped up for us. Enderson finished the cross country season with the two best races of her career and DiGrazia rebounded well from the conference meet to have one of her best races too."

The No. 2 and No. 3 runners for Utah were side-by-side, finishing only four-tenths of a second behind one another. Endersen was Utah's No. 2, taking 53rd in 23:00.2 while DiGrazia was 54th in 23:00.6.

The rest of Utah's runners were Stephanie Skoreyko (62nd, 23:12), Kellie Anderson (92nd, 24:08.5) and Janett Ern (94th, 24:11).

The University of Colorado won the meet on 64 points while Texas Tech's Sally Kipyego (19:45.9) won the race.