NCAA Division III Championships Results

Winneconne, Wis. - The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse women's cross country team placed ninth at the 2018 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III Championships Saturday morning at Lake Breeze Golf Club.  The Eagles finished with 313 points while Washington University-St. Louis (Mo.) captured the national title with 98 points. Johns Hopkins University (Md.) placed second with 99 points while Massachusetts Institute of Technology was third with 247 and UW-Eau Claire fourth with 265.

SUNY-Geneseo (277 points) was fifth followed by Brandeis University, Mass. (277), Williams College, Mass. (283), Middlebury College, Vt. (301), UW-La Crosse (313) and Carleton College, Minn. (326) to round-out the top-10. SUNY-Geneseo earned fifth-place over Brandeis (Mass.) based a tiebreaker on each of the team's top-five runners. A total of 32 teams competed. 

UW-La Crosse had a pair of runners earn NCAA III All-America honors Saturday as Sadie Kroll finished 12th with a time of 21:30.6 on the 6,000-meter course and Hannah Beilke was 18th with a time of 21:38.7. It is Kroll's second career All-America honors after placing 33rd in 2017. She also placed 74th in 2016. Beilke earns her first career NCAA III All-America accolade after finishing 189th in 2015 and 225th in 2017. 

It marks the first time since 2005 that UWL had a pair of All-America honors when Julia Rudd placed second and Kristen Painter 35th.

The Eagles' Ellie Miller placed 105th (22:35.7) on Saturday while Andrea Brekken finished 127th (22:44.6), Dakota Holzem 177th (23:06.2), Whitney Ebert 185th (23:10.2) and Kaylan Marshall 222nd (23:32.4). Brekken placed 247th in 2015 and 220th in 2016. Miller, Ebert, Holzem and Marshall were running in their first NCAA III Championship.  

Paige Lawler from Washington (Mo.) won the individual title Saturday (20:55.0). A total of 279 runners competed.

Making its 33rd appearance in the NCAA III Championships, UWL has recorded 14 top-six finishes in school history, including eight in the top-four. The Eagles have finished in the top-13 in four of the last five years, placing 13th in 2014, 12th in 2015 and sixth in 2016. UWL was 17th a year ago.  UWL won the national title in 1983 and placed second in 1982. 

Head coach Derek Stanley has led the women's team to three (2013, 2014, 2016) Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) titles. UWL placed sixth at the 2016 NCAA Division III Championships, the team's best finish since a fourth-place showing in 2005.