Dec. 11, 2017
By Megan Golden
NOTRE DAME, Ind. — Saturday afternoon’s Foot Locker Cross Country National Championship capped a wildly successful season for several of Notre Dame’s early signees. Four members of the University of Notre Dame’s Class of 2022 recorded top-12 finishes at the meet.
Running at Balboa Park, Irish signee Dylan Jacobs won the championship 5,000m race with a time of 15:19.7, while Danny Kilrea, the 2017 Illinois Cross Country State Champion, recorded a time of 15:27.3 and placed third. Buckeye Valley, Ohio, native Zach Kreft (15:48.2) was 12th.
On the women’s side, Jackie Gaughan recorded a fifth-place finish in the 5,000m with a 17:44.6 mark.
According to Milesplit, the men’s distance trio ranks No. 2, 3 and 13 in the nation in cross country.
On Nov. 25, Kilrea (14:53.3) was victorious in the Foot Locker Cross Country Midwest Regional Championship 5,000m at Wayne E. Dannehl Cross Country Course. Fellow signees Kreft (15:05.4) and Jacobs (15:07.5) placed second and fifth, respectively.
Previously, in the Nike Cross Country Midwest Regional on Nov. 12, Kilrea (15:00.0) placed second overall in the 5,000m race, while Jacobs (15:09.1) ran to fourth place and Kreft (15:17.2) finished in sixth.
Prospective Irish student-athletes have been headlining the Foot Locker Cross Country National Championship over the past few years. Most notably, current Irish junior Anna Rohrer set the Midwest Regional record with a mark of 16:54 in 2012 and followed that with a national championship.
Notre Dame has had a men’s or a women’s national champion in four of the last seven seasons (Molly Seidel in 2011; Rohrer in 2012 and 2014; Jacobs in 2017). Seidel became the first NCAA female student-athlete to win both the Foot Locker National Championship and an NCAA cross country title.
Coming Up Next
Notre Dame returns to the track at 10:30 a.m. ET on Jan. 13, when it competes at the Wolverine Invitational (Ann Arbor, Michigan).
For more on the Irish track and field program, follow @NDXCTF on Twitter and on Instagram.
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Megan Golden, athletics communications assistant director at the University of Notre Dame, has been part of the Fighting Irish athletics communications team since August 2016. In her role, she coordinates all media efforts for the Notre Dame women’s soccer and cross country/track and field programs and is the secondary contact for women’s basketball. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Golden is a 2014 graduate of Saint Mary’s College and former Irish women’s basketball manager. Prior to arriving at Notre Dame, she worked in public relations with the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox.