Bentley Women's Cross Country Set for Saturday's NCAA Championships
WALTHAM, Mass. – Led by East Region champion Tara Dooley (Lee/Lee HS) and regional runner-up Amy Varsell (Burlington, Conn./Lewis S. Mills HS), the Bentley University Falcons will compete in Saturday's NCAA Division II Championships at the Plantes Ferry Athletic Complex in Spokane, Wash.
The 6,000-meter race will be held at 10:30 am PST (1:30 pm EST) and will be streamed live at www.NCAA.com. A link to live results will also be posted at www.bentleyfalcons.com.
Four of the Falcons, including Dooley and Varsell, have experience on the Plantes Ferry course as that was also the site in 2011 when Bentley qualified as a team for the first time. The other veterans from that squad are seniors Ashley Nichols (Kenmore, Wash./Inglemoor HS) and Leah Schiller (Tipp City, Ohio/Tippecanoe HS).
Dooley, a junior who won the East Region by nearly 37 seconds over her teammate, will be competing in her third NCAA Cross Country Championship. The 2013 Northeast-10 and USTFCCCA Division II East Region Women's Cross Country Athlete of the Year was 49th overall in 2011, missing All-America honors by 15 seconds and nine places, and 58th last year in Joplin, Mo.
Varsell, a grad student, will be making her seventh trip to an NCAA Division II Championship. The five-time track All-America and two-time Capital One Academic All-America has placed in the NCAA indoor championships in 2011 and 2012, and the NCAA outside championships each of the last three springs.
Nichols, the team's captain, has had an excellent senior year as she earned first-team All-Northeast-10 honors and joined Varsell and Dooley on the USTFCCCA All-East Region team. She was sixth in the conference championships and eighth during the regional meet at Franklin Park earlier this month.
Also making the trip west to compete in the NCAAs are junior Nikki Sirignano (Wilmington/ Wilmington HS) and sophomore Sarah Brennan (Quincy/Notre Dame Academy) and Samantha Albanese (Lynnfield/Lynnfield HS). During the regional, Bentley's fourth and fifth finishers were Brennan (45th) and Sirignano (51st).
Coach Kevin Curtin's team finished second in the East Regional and will be joined in Spokane by two other Northeast-10 institutions, Stonehill College and Merrimack College.
