NCAA Northeast Regional Up Next for UConn XC

STORRS, Conn. – The UConn cross country team will head down to the Bronx, N.Y. for the 2023 NCAA Northeast Regional Championship on Friday, November 10.  The Huskies will be competing to earn a spot in the NCAA Championship race next week.

The Huskies will line-up as one of 42 teams from the northeast region at Van Cortlandt Park for the 6K race that will step-off at 11 am on Friday.  The top two teams in each NCAA regional secure automatic bids to the championship. The first four regional finishers not from an automatic qualifying or at-large team also secure an auto-bid to the championships.

If a team doesn't secure an automatic bid, it will have to rely on the NCAA DI Cross Country Subcommittee to select it as one of the 13 at-large teams. Only two individual at-larges are selected, making a strong regional performance pivotal to advancing toward a national title.

The Huskies enter the regional title race ranked fifth in the latest USTFCCCA Northeast Regional Poll, behind Harvard at the top, Syracuse in second, Providence in third and Boston College in fourth.  UConn moved up a spot after their fourth place finish at the 2023 BIG EAST Championship race two weeks ago where the Huskies had three all-conference finishers and five runners in the top-30.

UConn finished seventh at last season's regional race on this same course.  Junior Chloe Thomas (Dundas, Ontario) was the Huskies top-finisher last season, taking 29th overall with a time of 21:11.4.  Thomas is coming off a seventh place finish and All-BIG EAST performance at the conference meet.  She will be backed-up by fellow all-conference runners, senior Jenna Zydanowicz (West Hartford, Conn.) and Caroline Towle (Bedford, Mass.).

After regional action has concluded, advancing teams will compete for a national championship on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Virginia will host the championship meet at Panorama Farms.