Men's cross country receives NCAA Championship bid

The Richmond men's cross country team continues to check off its to-do list as the team received an at-large bid to the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championship Sunday, Nov. 14.

The championship event will be hosted by Indiana State University at the LaVern Gibson Championship Course at the Wabash Valley Family Sports Center in Terre Haute, Ind., on Nov. 22.

The men's team finished fourth at the Southeast Regional Championships in Louisville, Ky., on Saturday, Nov. 13, which helped increase their chance at an at-large bid.

Senior captain Matt Llano led the Spiders, finishing eighth overall with a time of 30 minutes and 29 seconds. Fellow senior captains Andrew Benford and Tim Quinn, finished 10th (30:30) and 20th (31:02), respectively.

Junior Levi Grandt came in 54th (32:09) and senior Jon Wilson finished 66th (32:23).

Teams and single athletes had to qualify in their NCAA regional meet in order to be eligible to participate in the NCAA championship meet. A total of 31 teams were selected to participate, with the top two teams from each of the nine regions (18 teams), in addition to the 13 teams that were selected at-large.

Thirty-eight individual runners were chosen to compete at the championship meet next weekend through both the automatic qualifier and at-large selection processes. All of the individual qualifiers finished in the top-25 in their regional meets.

Senior captain of the women's team, Amy Van Alstine, qualified for the women's championship after finishing seventh in the women's 6K race at the NCAA Southeast Regional Championship this past weekend. Van Alstine's time was 20 minutes and 25.3 seconds.

This story will be updated with more information and quotes.

Contact staff writer Amelia Vogler at amelia.vogler@richmond.edu