American Women’s Cross Country Wins Patriot League Championship

Keira Carlstrom finished 41 seconds faster than any of her competitors on Saturday.

Women's Stats

WASHINGTON - American University women's cross country team captured the top three spots to take home the 2003 Patriot League championship today at Lafayette.
As a team, the Eagles finished with 30 points, besting runner-up Army by 27 points. Navy finished third, with 63 points.

Keira Carlstrom (Oakton, Va./Oakton) won the league individual title, finishing the 5,800m race in 20:02.8, more than 41 seconds faster than the second-place finisher. Carlstrom finished fourth last year in the league championship race.

American's Kelley Taylor (Virginia, Va./Kellam) and Jen Baclawski (Ijamsville, Md./Urbana) rounded out the top-three, finishing with times of 20:45.6 and 21:00.8, respectively. Whitney McNees (Pennington, N.J./Hopewell Valley Central) finished sixth with a personal best time of 21:08.6. Zaia Wharton (Elkins, W. Va./Elkins) rounded out the scoring for the Eagles with an 18th-place finish, in a time of 21:51.5.

It is the second consecutive Patriot League title for the Eagles' women's cross country team. American defeated Bucknell by just one point last year to win the league championship.

American University, which fields a 19-sport NCAA Division I athletics program featuring 10 women's sports and nine for men, completed its second year of membership in the Patriot League. Since joining the Patriot League, the University has captured league championships in men's cross country, women's cross country, women's lacrosse, men's soccer, women's soccer, men's tennis, women's tennis and women's volleyball, and a regular-season title in men's basketball.

Chartered by an act of Congress in 1893, American University features students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and more than 160 nations worldwide.