Northwestern University Athletics
The 2000 Women's Cross Country Season In Review
11/30/2000 12:00:00 AM | Women's Cross Country & Track
Nov. 30, 2000
EVANSTON, Ill. - A fourth-place finish at the NCAA Midwest Regional, which gave them serious consideration for an at-large bid into the national championship meet.
A rise from seventh to fifth at the Big Ten Championships.
Voting points in the national poll.
An athlete competed in the NCAA National Women's Cross Country Championship meet for the first time since the program was brought back to Northwestern three years ago.
A good year for the Wildcat women's cross country program? Yeah, you could say that.
The Northwestern women's cross country program once again took several steps forward in 2000. The Wildcats began the campaign with an easy win at the 2-mile UIC Home Opener, then sandwiched second-place finishes at the Bradley Open and the Lakefront Invitational around an 11th-place finish at the 29-team Roy Griak Invitational in Minneapolis.
October brought new challenges, and the Wildcats responded with a spectacular fifth-place finish (out of 31 teams) at the highly-regarded Notre Dame Invitational. That was followed by a 28th-place finish at the Pre-National Invitational in Ames, Iowa.
Then came Big Tens, where the Wildcats finished fifth behind nationally-ranked Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota as well as unranked Illinois. However, two weeks later Northwestern turned the tables on the Illini and placed themselves firmly on the bubble for an at-large NCAA bid with a fourth-place finish at the Midwest Regionals. However, the selection committee picked only Missouri from the Midwest to go with automatic qualifiers Kansas State and Minnesota.
Northwestern was represented at the NCAA's, though, as sophomore Rachel Evjen ran as an individual. She placed 126th, right in the middle of the 252-person field. It was a good way to end a spectacular season for Evjen, who led the Wildcats across the finish line in every race this fall. She won the UIC Home Opener and had Top 5 finishes at the Bradley Open and the Lakefront Invitational.
Evjen also earned second team All-Big Ten and Midwest Regional honors. She was joined in those categories by junior Laura Evans, who proved to be a pleasant surprise with her late-season charge. Evans scored in every meet for the Wildcats and was the second-best NU runner in five of the last six meets.
Two freshmen came into the season with high expectations set by head coach April Ecke, and they did not disappoint. Emily Blakeslee was runner-up at the UIC Home Opener and never looked back, scoring in every meet. Nora Colligan -- who like Blakeslee ran for powerful Rockford (Mich.) High School -- scored in five meets including the Big Ten and Midwest Regional championships. Northwestern could also count on sophomores Karen Rogers and Nicole Kuznia for points, as Rogers was among NU's top five seven times and Kuznia was there three times.
The captains, senior Shannon McGowan and junior Maria Badaracco, also provided some highlights in 2000. Badaracco scored at the Pre-National and ran at the Midwest Regional, while McGowan -- in her final race as a Wildcat -- was the sixth NU runner at the Midwest Regional and finished in 22:21, more than a minute better than any of her other 6-kilometer outings this fall.
