10th-Ranked Huskies Head For National Championships

2023 NCAA Cross Country Championships

Saturday, Nov. 18

Charlottesville, Va. | Panorama Farms

The Dawgs have run a lot of miles, and must fly a lot more miles this week, to run one more 6,000-meter race this Saturday for the national championship. Washington’s women’s cross country team is set to cap the fall season at NCAAs in Charlottesville, Va. at 7:20 a.m. Pacific time. The race will be televised live on ESPNU.
 
The Pac-12 Champion Huskies are in the 31-team championship field for the 17th year in a row. Ranked 10th, the Huskies are chasing a top-10 finish that would be their first since 2018, though they have finished 11th two times since then.
 
Last year the Huskies ran to 17th but they have run their way back to NCAAs with only three of the seven women from last year’s NCAA squad returning. A year ago Sophie O’Sullivan was 73rd, Naomi Smith was 158th, and Ella Borsheim was 174th.
 
Panorama Farms is the site of the championships for the first time. The Huskies ran well on that same course in their season opener, taking fourth at the Virginia Invitational on Sept. 23 with O’Sullivan and Chloe Foerster both running in the top-20.
 
From there the Huskies had a so-so outing at the Wisconsin Invitational, but then hit their stride at the final Pac-12 Championships, winning the team title for the first time since 2009 by a mere two points over Stanford. The Dawgs then locked up an at-large bid to NCAAs with a third-place finish at West Regionals.
 
Eight Huskies are headed to Charlottesville, with seven to race on Saturday and one alternate. The eight women will be sophomore Ella Borsheim, sophomore Julia David-Smith, sophomore Chloe Foerster, senior Samantha Friborg, junior Tori Herman, junior Sophie O’Sullivan, junior Naomi Smith, and senior India Weir.
 
Washington’s top-five scorers have been the same at the past three meets, though with different orders among the five. O’Sullivan, Foerster, David-Smith, Weir, and Herman have accounted for the points of late.
 
O’Sullivan, coming off a brilliant track season that included an Olympic Standard in the 1,500-meters run at the World Championships, has continued straight into fall and earned All-Pac-12 First Team honors and All-West Region.
 
Foerster has had a huge breakout fall in her second season as a Dawg. She went from 212th at Wisconsin in 2022 to 40th this year, and from 44th at Pac-12s last year…