After placing in the top-five in all four regular season invitationals, the UConn women’s cross country team will head to Kenosha, Wisconsin for the Big East Championship this Saturday. The Huskies will join the rest of the conference in a 6K race from Kenosha’s Wayne Dannehl Course with an expected start time of 12:50 p.m.
Connecticut wrapped up their regular season on Oct. 13 with an impressive fifth-place finish in the Arturo Barrios Invitational. This was one of the more dominant performances UConn had during the regular season as it finished fifth out of 42 schools, with four runners placing in the top 60.
The Huskies ran to a first-place finish in the Suffolk Short Classic to open the season and followed that up with a second-place effort in the Providence Friar Invitational. Connecticut placed fifth in the Battle in Beantown on Sept. 29 before concluding the regular season with another top-five placement in College Station, Texas.
Upperclassmen Chloe Thomas and Jenna Zydanowicz have led the way for UConn this season as the pair finished with top-15 placements in three out of their four races. Thomas, a junior from Dundas, Ontario, Canada, is coming off a seventh-place finish in the Barrios Invitational with Zydanowicz finishing right behind her at No. 11 out of 400 total runners.
The Huskies will also look for Caroline Towle to pick up where she left off after her personal record 20:25 6K time in the Barrios Invitational. Towle, a senior from Bedford, Massachussetts, was named team captain at the beginning of the season and will look to lead the Huskies to their first ever Big East Championship.
Currently ranked No. 3 in the country, Georgetown comes in as the clear favorite to win the event, after winning it in back to back seasons. Connecticut will be looking to get over the hump after finishing in third place two years in a row. In 2022, UConn finished just 3:49 behind the first place Hoyas, and a mere 36 seconds behind in 2021.
Head coach Beth Alford-Sullivan, who coached the 1996 Stanford Cardinals to a national championship, has brought a winning culture to Storrs and has the Huskies ready to compete for their first ever Big East title.
