The 1999 season is over for all but one member of this year’s Pomona-Pitzer women’s Cross-Country team. Senior captain Anastasia Finnegan, qualified for the NCAA Division III Cross-Country Nationals by finishing fourth overall in the Western Regionals, which were hosted last Saturday at McIver Park in Estacada, Oregon by Lewis & Clark College. The top two teams, as well as the top six individual finishers who are not members of the top two teams, qualify for Nationals, held this Saturday at the University of Wisconsin in Osh-Kosh.

Finnegan ran her personal best of 18:43.9 minutes for the 5000m course to become only the tenth Pomona-Pitzer individual runner in school history to qualify for Nationals. According to Coach Kirk Reynolds, "the course at Nationals is light and fast, so Anastasia has a good chance of achieving another personal best this weekend." Finnegan, deemed SCIAC Runner of the Year for this season and last season, is excited for the heightened level of competition. When asked to describe her feelings about Nationals, Finnegan said: "I am definitely excited, and a little nervous about this weekend. One of my goals definitely was to make it to Nationals. I am thrilled that I get to run my last Pomona-Pitzer cross-country race at such a big meet." Nationals features 225 runners with times ranging from 16:30 to 21 minutes, a huge increase in competition from the SCIAC Conference, which featured 60 runners with 5000m times ranging between 19 and 26 minutes, and the Regional meet with 100 runners whose times were between 18 and 21 minutes. Coach Reynolds described the excitement level at Nationals to be electric: "There are parents, spectators, teammates, and coaches cheering throughout the entire course. It is like running through a tunnel of sound." Anastasia will join the men’s Cross-Country team’s only individual qualifier, Adam Bordman, ‘01 who finished fifth in the men’s Regional competition last Saturday.

Pomona-Pitzer sent its top six runners, including Finnegan, co-captain Leah Barnes, ’00, Catherine Brown, ’00, Andrea Clemons, ’02, and Sheila Ormond, ’02, and Kelsey Ferguson, ’03 to participate in the team competition at Regionals. Pomona-Pitzer scored a total of 151 points, putting them in sixth place, a significant improvement over last year’s ninth-place finish. According to Reynolds, the top five Sagehen runners’ times combined make up the fourth fastest team aggregate time in the school’s history.

Regionals was a meet with many individual success stories. In addition to Finnegan, Ferguson achieved her all-time personal record as well. Both Clemons and Ormond ran their college personal records, and Brown ran her second best time ever. The Regionals therefore marked the culmination of a lot of hard work and success for the 1999 Sagehens women’s Cross-Country team this season.