Anna having the fastest time overall in the both regionals at 33.07.09 and Freshman Gaughan 2nd fastest at 3:09:76 while Freshman Maddy Denner's time of 33.37.65 was 11th overall in the nation, ahead of 11 of the 12 west regional qualifiers and over 15 seconds better than the last two east regional qualifier. In the 24 women's field, ND is the only team with 3 qualifiers, while Oregon, Colorado, Syracuse, and New Mexico are the only other schools with 2 runners qualified.

The west regional was run much slower with only the winner running alone fast at 33.15.21, still more than 5 seconds slower than the top 2 ND runners. #2-7 were much slower, bunched together within 1 second around 3:41 and the next 5 qualifiers coming in by 3:55, over 13 seconds ahead of the 38 non-qualifiers. The east regional was more spread out with #3 from Michigan at 33.22 and #4-9 from 33.31 to 33.35 with Maddy's time coming in 10th. The east regional started with 48 runners.

The final in Austin will be run differently with a much smaller field than the regionals Also the East had 8 of the 12 qualifiers having personal or season bests (including all 3 ND runners), whereas only 1 of the west qualifiers ran either a personal or season best. They may all be setting up for a faster final, but we will see. Certainly the west regional winner from New Mexico can run much faster as she won the Mountain West championship at 32.09.10! I believe she is the favorite. Still having three qualifiers does help ND strategically. Hope they can pull mit off.

She's had injury issues since high school. It would be nice if those days are gone.