| Year: | 2021 |
| Sport(s): | Women's Cross Country |
2011 Women’s Cross Country Team
In 2011, the women’s cross country team captured the program’s 2nd NWAACC championship. This would end up being the second championship of three that the Trojan women’s cross country program racked up from 2009-2012.
Everett showed well all season long, competing in large meets with athletes ranging from NCAA Division I to Division III, and oftentimes placing higher than their 4-year counterparts. The season-long success culminated with their best overall team performance of the year at the NWAACC Championships at Legion Memorial Golf Course in Everett.
Katie Strong led the team with a 7th place finish, followed by Lacey Wagner at 11th, but it was the tight grouping of Veronica Hall (13th), Catie Arrigoni (14th), and Kristina Cordy (18th) that helped secure 56 team points, 12 points higher than 2nd place Treasure Valley College. Sixth and and seventh place finishers for Everett included Irene Lotspeich and Kate Gebhardt.
Rounding out the 2011 roster was Jessica Beam, Brenna Eldredge, Kaitlin Fisher, Danielle Friend, Britnee Grooms, Megan McCabe, Paige Hayghe, Ashley Scully, Anahi Ficencio, Phung Vuong, and Mackenzie Wren. Assistant coaches were Tiffany Elias and Mitchell Elias.
Katie Strong took home the first place medal at the Northwest Region Championship race, and was named NWAACC All-American.
Head coach Matt Koenigs had this to say about that 2011 squad:
The 2011 women's XC team was young with 11 of our top-12 runners in their freshman year of college. At the beginning of the season, our top-7 was difficult to predict. It came down to the Regional meet to determine our NWAC squad. We could only race 7 at the NWAC championships, but 12 had already made strong cases for inclusion on the team. It sounds like a great problem to have, but it kept me awake at night. Ultimately, we let their performances decide the issue at Regionals where they responded by taking the first 11 places overall.
The NWAC meet was a far different affair and five teams stepped to the line who were all in contention for the team title: Spokane, Treasure Valley, Clackamas, and Clark. These five teams as it turns out would all finish within 19 points of one another, a rare thing at an NWAC championship. With 56 team points, we finished just 8 points ahead of runner-up Treasure Valley and all seven of the EvCC runners finished in front of every other team's number 5 runner. With no one for the Trojans finishing higher than 7th overall individually and each of those other teams placing at least one, if not two, runners ahead of our top individual finisher, this win was a complete team effort from our first to our seventh finisher. Both our sixth (Irene Lotspeich) and seventh runners (captain Kate Gebhardt) finished ahead of every other team's 5th scoring runner, adding at least 1 point to everyone's score in a meet we won by just 8 points.
They had a complete team performance and they won as a team, I am so proud of what they were able to accomplish and I owe much of the thanks to assistant coaches Mitchell and Tiffany Elias - Tiffany Elias' work especially was a difference-maker and this team probably doesn't win an NWAC title without her mentoring so many young runners during their freshman seasons.
