Badgers finish third at Big Ten Championships

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Thanks to a trio of Badgers that earned All-Big Ten honors, the No. 17 Wisconsin women’s cross country team finished third at the 2022 Big Ten Cross Country Championship on Friday morning on the U of M golf course.

No. 23 Michigan State won the championship with 78 points while No. 26 Michigan scored 86 points. The Badgers scored 94 points while Ohio State took fourth with 104 points.

Just over six seconds separated UW’s top-three finishers as redshirt junior Shea Ruhly led UW with her eighth-place finish in 20 minutes, 26.3 seconds. Senior Samantha Stieve had her best time in a Big Ten race, placing 13th in 20:32.4. Graduate student Lucinda Crouch finished 14th in 20:36.5. while junior Victoria Heiligenthal took 18th in 21:11.4. Junior Vivian Hacker and senior Peyton Sippy rounded out the top-five Wisconsin scorers in 29th place in 21:01.8 and 30th place in 21:02.2 respectively

The Badgers got out strong with five runners among the top 35 runners, at the one mile mark. Wisconsin was second in the team race with 89 points two miles into the race before placing third overall.

Thanks to their top-14 finishes, Ruhly, Stieve, and Crouch earned second-team All-Big Ten honors.

Straight from the Course

Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Mick Byrne: 

“We thought we had a shot and we went in there to win. I’m really proud of our women. They gave it their best shot and we had some great performances. You know, a lot of lessons to learn, a lot of positives to take out out of this and, looking forward to the next competition. Certainly Shea Ruhly and Sami Stevie put them themselves in a position to win the individual title, and that’s important.

Overall a great team effort. We have six ranked teams in the conference and we gotta keep our heads up.”

Shea Ruhly:

“Today was actually a pretty good race for us. I think that it was important for us to go out there in the first race of the championship season and just like show where we’re at and then know that we’re gonna continue to move up from here. And I think we all know that each individual can do a lot better, but even on a day like today, we can still come in at third in the Big Ten. Looking forward to continuing our progress as we, move up to those bigger races like regionals and nationals.”

Up Next:

The Badgers look to qualify…