MEET PREVIEW: Wilgenbusch Prepared to Compete at NCAA Division III National Championships
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Anna Wilgenbusch (St. Paul, Minn.) of the University of Dallas women's cross country team is set to run at the NCAA Division III National Championships on Saturday. The women's race will begin at 11:45 a.m. EST (10:45 a.m. CST) from E.P. Tom Sawyer State Park. Wilgenbusch continues to shine on the course gathering award after award in her stellar sophomore campaign. She broke her own 6k school record last weekend at the NCAA South/Southeast Regional Championship in Memphis, Tennessee last weekend, claiming a first-place finish with a time of 21:29.3.
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Fresh off the presses, Wilgenbusch was named 2019 NCAA Division III South/Southeast Regional Women's Athlete of the Year with her winning effort at the regional championships. Wilgenbusch was named to the NCAA Division III All-Region Team. She is the first athlete in program history to gather both of these accolades.
Wilgenbusch is undefeated on the year winning nine meets (single-season program record) and has won the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) and United States Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA) Championship races.
The sophomore runner earned SCAC Runner-of-the-Year, All-SCAC First Team, and USCAA All-American First Team on this long terror. She also has matched the all-time record for meet wins in a career this season alone and earned her trip to the NCAA National Championships and is the first UD athlete to qualify for the national race at the NCAA level. Wilgenbusch became the ninth female in SCAC history to win at regionals and became the league's first regional winner since 2013.
Head Coach Nick Schneigert has this to say about Anna: "Once again, she will go 100 percent in this race. All the tapering down since our peak training has paid dividends. She was like a slingshot. Last week we had a game plan in place and she executed it with perfection with a surge at a certain point of the race and dropping the athletes who tried staying with her. This Saturday she will have another game plan set in place and I am confident she will come out with another great result. There has been some great results from what I have seen from the other regions, but I am hoping she will break into the top 15 and will be the first NCAA All American in our school's history. She even has a chance of winning the whole thing as well. It will definitely be a battle out there."