LEBANON, Pa. --- Sophomore Natalie Novotni captured the 2018 Landmark Conference Women's Cross Country individual title and helped the Moravian College squad to a runner-up finish in the race hosted by Elizabethtown College at Union Canal Tunnel Park in Lebanon, Pennsylvania Saturday morning.
The Greyhounds scored 46 points as a team, trailing the Blue Jays by just four points while Novotni had a career-best time of 22:58.60 to win the race by just under three seconds.
"As I told the team, this was about as complete a race we've had, across our roster, since Mideast Regionals in 2014," commented Director of Cross Country and Track & Field Jesse Baumann. "I couldn't be more proud of how we competed. Obviously, I would have liked to have had the team victory but ETown had a great meet and there wasn't much more we could have done.
"Natalie had an amazing day," Baumann continued. "She slowly slid through the pack and you could tell with a mile to go, she kept incrementally closing the gap to the top 2 Etown runners. Carly had an assertive race and finally placed on the All-Conference team like she deserves. Natalie Stabilito is one of the gutsiest racers we've been blessed to have on our team and didn't care about how she was projected to finish. She just fought like heck and earned the Freshman of the Year award, and then Katie, Molly, Ashley, Alyssa, and so many of the rest of our roster had their usual steady races. It was a great day and our staff couldn't be more proud of how all 15 women performed."
Novotni led the field of 81 runners that saw three other Greyhounds place in the top 15. Junior Katie Mayer was sixth in a time of 23:29.23 while junior Carly Danoski placed tenth in 23:47.87 and freshman Natalie Stabilito was the top freshman in the race in 23:54.07 as she finished in 12th place. The Hounds had three other top 25 finishers with sophomore Molly Talarico in 17th at 24:06.86, senior Alyssa Limbaugh at 20th with a time of 24:20.52 and junior Ashley Rohrer finishing 25th in 24:49.99.
Moravian would have another eight runners finish in a span of 1:30 led by freshman Rachel McCoach in 29th place in 25:02.61. Freshman Santina Burak finished in 32nd while junior Rachel Mikols was 34th in the race. Junior Alyssa Ullmann placed 40th while sophomore Nora Grimm was 41st and junior Marlee Hornbaker was 43rd. Rounding out the runners for the Hounds were freshman Emma Marion in 46th place and sophomore Alison Nicolosi in 52nd.
The Blue and Grey will be back in action on Saturday, November 10 when the squad competes in the 2018 NCAA Division III Mideast Regional at DeSales University in Center Valley.
