2024 NCAA DIII Men's and Women's Cross Country Championships

Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024 • Terre Haute, Ind.  • 11 a.m. (Women's Race) / 12 p.m. (Men's Race) LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course

Live Results: Leone Timing  •  Live Video: NCAA.com

TICKET INFORMATION: For those heading to Terre Haute for the championships, tickets are $10.00 for general admission.
  
POSTSEASON HISTORY: This season marks the first time ever that Union cross country will send runners to both the men's and women's national championships in the same season, with senior Cat Dacey representing the women's team and classmates Ben Neff and Ryan Russell running on the men's side.

Dacey qualified for the NCAA Championships as an individual for the second straight season and is Union's lone individual qualifier in women's program history. Besides Dacey's two appearances, Union's only other appearance at an NCAA Championship came at the inaugural event in 1981, when the women qualified as a team by winning the NCAA Eastern Regional and finished sixth out of nine squads at the national championship. Russell and Neff are the men's program's first NCAA qualifiers since Justin Zorn '17 in 2016 and just the fourth and fifth individuals to run at nationals in program history. The tandem are also the second pair of runners to represent Union at the event in the same season, joining Stan Wiskoski '77 and Steve Jones '76 in 1975. Wiskoski is the men's team's only two-time NCAA qualifier, doing so in 1975 and 1976, while Jones' 30th-place finish in 1975 is the highest by any Union runner and came just five spots short of All-America honors.

HOW THEY GOT HERE: While the easiest way to qualify for the NCAA Championships is with a team selection, all three runners earned individual selections by placing among the top-seven finishers at the NCAA Mideast Regional Championships whose teams did not qualify for the national championships. Dacey took eighth place at regionals and had the top time among runners from non-qualifying women's teams. On the men's side, Russell's 10th-place finish was third among non-qualifying team members and Neff's 27th-place result earned him the seventh and final individual spot.
 
ALL FOR ONE: Over the last two seasons, Dacey has taken total control of the Union College record books, and she enters her final collegiate cross country race with the top-10 6K times in program history. She broke the school record for the third time (and the second time this season) with a 21:30.7 finish at the Mideast Regional Championships last weekend, surpassing her previous record that she set earlier this year at the Connecticut College Invitational. Her time of 22:26.3 at last year's NCAA Championship currently ranks ninth on both her and the school's all-time list.
 
IN THE BOOKS: Russell and Neff enter the weekend with a combined eight spots on the men's cross country all-time top-10 8K list. Russell holds the top-four 8K times in program history and has broken the school record twice during his senior season, last coming with a time of 24:37.5 at the Connecticut College Invitational in October. Five of the six fastest 8Ks in program history have been run by the senior so far this season. Neff currently holds the seventh- and 10th-fastest runs in school history, with his best time of 25:14.2 coming at the RPI Harvest Classic in September 2023.

ALL-REGION RUNS: The Union senior trio have combined for five of the seven USTFCCCA All-Region honors in Union cross country history. On the men's side, Russell has earned All-Region honors in each of the last two seasons while Neff earned the honor for the first time as a senior; the only other two All-Region honors in program history came from Justin Zorn '17 in 2015 and 2015. The two All-Region honors picked up Dacey as a junior and senior are the only two regional recognitions in women's program history.
 
THE FIELD: The fields comprise approximately 290 runners of each gender on Saturday. Thirty-two teams of seven runners each were selected to participate in the championship, 10 automatic qualifiers and 22 at-large selections, while 70 individuals were also selected to compete at the event. The top-40 student-athletes to finish the race earn USTFCCCA All-America honors.