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Jenny Koeppel

BUFFALO, NY - University at Buffalo women's cross country athlete Jenny Koeppel (Amherst, NY/Amherst) has been selected to participate in the 2004 NCAA Women's Cross Country National Championship. The announcement was made late Sunday evening for the meet which will be held Monday, November 22 at the LaVern Gibson Championship Course located at the Wabash Valley Family Sports Center in Terre Haute, IN.

Koeppel earned one of three at-large spots in the field after her ninth-place finish at Saturday's Northeast Regional Championships in the Bronx. Koeppel raced to a 6K clocking of 20:59.7.

"She's had a tremendous season and qualifying for nationals is icing on the cake for her and a well-deserved honor," said head coach Vicki Mitchell. "This was a goal for her ever since the end of the spring."

As per NCAA guidelines, 31 teams were selected to participate in the championship. The top two seven-person teams from each of the nine regions automatically qualified, for a total of 18 teams. Thirteen additional teams were selected at-large. Thirty-eight individuals, the first four from each region whose team did not advance to the championship race, and two additional at-large qualifiers, were selected to participate in the championship. With the West Region qualifying only three individuals, three at-large selections were made with Koeppel earning one of those spots.

Two other Mid-American Conference runners earned individual automatic qualifier spots from the Great Lakes Region, Ball State's Jill Scully and Akron's Morgan Sulzener. Koeppel won the MAC Championship race on October 30 with Scully finishing second and Sulzener eighth.

Koeppel is the first UB woman and third Bulls runner in over 35 years to compete in the NCAA Division I Championship. Previously, Ed Fuchs ran in three championship races from 1968-70 in what was known as the NCAA's University Division, the forerunner of today's Division I classification. Jeremie Slick raced in the 2001 Championships in Greenville, SC, finishing 91st overall. UB has previous sent women's runners to the NCAA Division III Championships during the 1980s. In 1985, Margaret Gehring finished 15th overall to gain All-American status.

Stanford University won last season's team championship while North Carolina's Shalane Flanagan won the individual title. Providence's Kim Smith, who won Saturday's Northeast Regional by more than 20 seconds, was the national runner-up last year.