Results
EL DORADO, Kan. - A battle that featured four of the top-10 ranked NJCAA Division I Cross Country teams and the fourth-ranked NJCAA Division II Cross Country team would play out on Friday morning with the Cloud County Community College women's cross country team coming away with a team title at the 2022 Ollile Isom Invitational held at the El Dorado Legion Disc Golf Course in El Dorado, Kansas on Friday, October 14th.
Represented at the meet would be NJCAA Division II fourth-ranked Cowley Community College along with NJCAA Division I top-10 teams Hutchinson (number two), Butler (number four), Cloud County (number eight), and Dodge City (number nine) as the meet would come down to a single point with the T-Birds edging out Hutchinson by finishing with 37 points to Hutchinson's 38 to win the team title. Dodge City would take third in the five-team meet with 60 total points while Butler (99 points) and Cowley (105 points) would finish in fourth and fifth.
As part of Cloud County's team victory, CCCC would be represented by the top-two individual finishers in the race with
Lucy Ndungu posting a meet-winning time of 19:08.53 to beat out teammate
Melody Ochana who would take runner-up honors with a time of 19:25.60. Hutchinson would attempt to close the gap in the team score as the next four finishers would all be Blue Dragons, but Cloud County would get a ninth-place finish from
Abigail Fisher (20:20.89), 13th-place finish from
Emmy Punches (21:01.07) and 15th-place finish from
Mary Kua (21:06.81) to offset a 21st-place finish from the fifth and final scoring HCC runner. Along with the five scoring runners for the T-Birds, CCCC would also have
Bailey Rock (27th, 21:59.75),
Nikola Prochazkova (31st, 22:10.57),
Aina Goir (33rd, 22:19.47), and
Carryna Light (52nd, 30:34.67) all compete in the 5,000-meter race. Of the nine runners for Cloud County, five (Ndungu, Fisher, Punches, Kua, and Prochazkova) posted season-best times in the 5K.
What's Next?
Cloud County will look to use the momentum gained from Friday's team victory to try and earn a third-consecutive NJCAA Region VI and Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference West Division Team Title at the 2022 NJCAA Region VI Cross Country Championships in Hutchinson, Kansas on Friday, October 28th. The meet, which will be held at Fun Valley Sports Complex, is expected to be another close-scoring team competition as last season the T-Birds beat out Dodge City by just seven points to become the first women's team to win back-to-back Region VI Titles since 2014-15 to account for the two Region VI Championship team titles in program history.
