Houser, Foerster Lead Dawgs At Wisconsin

MADISON, Wisc. – In perhaps the toughest field of the season, and a larger field than the national championships, the Husky cross country teams turned in a solid effort in tough conditions at the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational. The eighth-ranked UW women defeated nine Top-30 squads today, while the men got a top-20 individual finish from Luke Houser and outran two ranked squads.
 
The meet, held at the Thomas Zimmer Championship Course, featured 36 men’s teams and 33 women’s teams, with 22 ranked teams in each field, eight of the top-10 on the men’s side and seven of the top-10 on the women’s side.
 
The Husky women’s team went out aggressively and was fourth at the 2k split, but couldn’t quite maintain that positioning and finished a respectable 13^th-place today, beating out the likes of 10^th-ranked Colorado, 14^th-ranked Providence, 18^th-ranked Furman, 20^th-ranked Utah, 21^st-ranked North Carolina, 23^rd-ranked Wisconsin, and a few more top-30 teams.
 
Houser had a second-straight impressive run leading the men, and Leo Daschbach also cracked the top-100, as the Huskies placed 27^th overall, earning head-to-head wins over 19^th-ranked Florida State and 27^th-ranked NC State. UW still held out 1500m national champs Joe Waskom and Nathan Green, who could potentially make big impacts in the championship meets coming up.
 
UW will turn its attention soon to hosting the final Pac-12 Championships in its current alignment, which is now two weeks away on Oct. 27 at Chambers Creek Regional Park in University Place, Wash.
 
Women’s Race
 
Chloe Foerster and Julia David-Smith followed up their breakout season opening runs with impressive efforts to finish in the top-50 today. Foerster led the Huskies for the first time in her career, as she was 40^th in a time of 20:39. She moved up nine places over the final 2k. David-Smith was very steady, ranging from 46-51 at all three 2k splits, finishing 50^th overall in 20:43.
 
One year ago, Foerster was 212^th at this meet, an improvement of 172 places, while David-Smith was not yet running after knee surgery. As a freshman in 2021, David-Smith was 175^th at this meet.
 
Sophie O’Sullivan went out in the top-20 through 2k, then struggled in the middle 2k but rallied again down the stretch to grab a 65^th-place finish as the third Husky scorer in 20:52. A year ago, O’Sullivan ran to 144^th-place. Fourth across was India Weir in…