Nov. 19, 2010
Complete NCAA NAtional Release in PDF Format 
TERRE HAUTE, Ind.— The first national championship of the 2010-11 season is upon The University of Arizona as the No. 9 women’s cross country team and Stephen Sambu head to Terre Huate, Ind. to take part at the NCAA National Championships on Monday, Nov. 22.
The UA women, who have been ranked in the top-10 by the USTFCCCA for the majority of the season, earned an at-large invite to the event courtesy of posting several impressive finishes over the course of the year. The Wildcats kicked the season off by winning four straight meets, including the Roy Griak Invite hosted by the University of Minnesota, and followed that up with runners-up finishes at the Pre-National Invitational and Pac-10 Championships to build up their resume.
A fourth place finish at the NCAA West Regional Championships was all the team needed to qualify for their second consecutive national championship meet. The women advanced to their first championship appearance in eight years last years and found themselves with a 30th place finish.
A year removed from that meet, the Wildcats return to the same site at the Wabash Family Sports Center with much higher expectations after having proven themselves time and again over the course of the season. They will get one final shot to prove the mettle against the most elite teams in the country come Monday.
Not to be forgotten in the mix is junior college transfer Stephen Sambu from the men’s team, who qualified as an individual competitor in just his first season running Division I cross country. The transfer from Rend Lake College in Illinois has been among the best runners in the country this season, winning the Griak Invite in near-course record fashion and taking a top-five finish at the Pac-10 Championships.
At the NCAA West Regional meet, Sambu competed in his first ever 10,000-meter cross country run and did so to the tune of a runner-up finish. Even more impressive was that he led or was near the front for the majority of the race and lost in a footrace to Portland’s Trevor Dunbar by six hundredths of the second.
This is the second consecutive season that the men have qualified an individual competitor for the NCAA meet. Last year, Mohamud Ige tallied an All-American finish in 38th place. Sambu’s enters the race as a dark horse for an individual top-five finish and could challenge some of the leaders for the all-around title.
The women will kick off the meet with their 6,000-meter championship at 12:08 p.m. EST and the men will follow at 12:48 p.m. Check www.arizonawildcats.com for a full post-meet recap on Monday afternoon.
