The UConn women’s cross country team will travel to Bethlehem, Penn. to compete at the Paul Short Invitational meet on Saturday, Oct. 5.
Saturday’s meet will mark the 50th annual invitational dedicated to Lehigh athletics legend Paul Short, a three-sport university captain in the 1930s.
Over 600 teams will be competing across two days and 16 races. There will be 71 Division I women’s teams running alongside UConn, including Big East counterpart St. John’s. The Huskies will compete in the women’s gold race, which starts at 11:45 a.m. on Saturday. There are three other women’s races taking place shortly thereafter, which include over 170 programs across all three divisions of collegiate athletics. All races will take place on the Goodman Campus cross country course.
The Huskies last ran at this meet in 2022, running seven athletes and placing 13th out of 46 women’s Division I teams. Then-sophomore Chloe Thomas finished first on the team in the women’s gold race with a time of 20:24.1 (49th overall) – the team ran an average of 20:45.5.
Multiple Huskies are looking to finish near the top of the women’s 6k standings, most prevalent of which is Thomas, who is coming off a record setting performance two weeks ago at the Spiked Shoe Invitational in State College, Penn.
“I think we all saw that our focus and process is beginning to shape into something special. I get to toe the line with a really strong team, that gives me a lot of confidence and excitement,” said Thomas.
Fellow Huskies Jenna Zydanowicz and Caroline Towle will look to build off impressive performances from the team’s last meet, which saw both runners finish inside the top 15 with times of 20:19 and 20:50, respectively.
Other runners to keep an eye on are Malin Rahm, Chloe Trudel, Maddie Relyea and Loghan Hughes, all of whom finished inside the top 85 at State College.
“Every woman on our team has made the most of their time here and has seriously taken big strides forward,” Thomas noted about the state of the team. “Instead of nervous energy, we’re going in with excitement.”
The all-time meet record is held by Georgetown’s Emily Infeld, who clocked in at 19:33.7 in 2010. It’s a time each of the over 1,000 yearly runners have been chasing for nearly 15 years, especially considering Infeld went on to compete in the 2016 Olympics. Last year’s fastest time was nearly 30-seconds behind Infeld’s record.