Cross Country finishes season on high note at Nationals
11/19/2022 12:00:00 PM | Women's Cross Country
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Men finish 19th, while women are 22nd in Nationals debut
LANSING, MICHIGAN - The UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs made their most of their trip to wintery Michigan.
With snow on the ground and a cold wind, the men and women Cross Country teams both finished with their best-ever team performances on a national level.
The men finished 19th, their first Top 20 finish in their three trips to Nationals. The women ended up 22nd in their debut as a team.
MIT won the men's title while Johns Hopkins repeated as women's champions.
Transfer Oliver Chang led UC Santa Cruz after making two prior trips to Nationals as an alternate. He ran the 8K course in 25:48.5 to finish 58th. He's UC Santa Cruz's first top 60 finisher at Nationals since Armando Siquieros was 11th in 1982. Raymond Ingersoll was 112th in 26:10 flat, followed one second later by Eric Jackson who placed 117th. Eric Anderson was 172nd in 26:27.7, Casey Orton was 183rd in 26:32.1 and Walter Teitelbaum, the only returner from the last team to make nationals, was 209th in 26:44.5. Luke Holland rounded out the contingent with a finish of 236th in 26:58.1.
For the women, the seven participants almost doubled the total number of Banana Slugs at Nationals, as only eight individual participants had competed prior to this year. Senior Riley Martel-Phillips led the Banana Slugs finishing 41st in 22:44.8. She became the top finisher at Nationals in program history, 17 places better than Mikayla Murphy in 2008.
Fellow senior Ash Baudin was 80th in her final 6K, crossing the line in 23:13.4. Andrea Gallardo was 191st in 24:04.3. A pair of First-Years finished next: Faith Dyogi was 211th in 24:13.4, followed by Helena Janku 0.9 seconds later for 212.
 The rest of the Slug contingent were sophomores Iris Abegglen (229th, 24:22.4) and Hanna Hekkanen (265th, 24:50.8).
Both Banana Slugs teams made it to Nationals, a program first
