Koskei finishes season with top-50 finish at NCAA nationals

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Khánh Nguyễn

Wichita State’s Winny broke the Wichita State 3000m school record, March 22, 2019 at Cessna Stadium.

Wichita State junior runner Winny Koskei finished off the cross country season with a 47th-place finish at the NCAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday.

Koskei clocked in with a time of 20:55.1 to finish in the top 50 of the 6K race. She had to work her way into the top 50, climbing from 74th at the 2K mark of the race. To win All-American honors, runners must place in the top-40.

“She’s not extremely excited because top 40,” Head Coach Kirk Hunter said in a statement to GoShockers. “The girls she ran with at Regionals placed ahead of her. I thought she did her best to execute the plan. She had a better start this time, but didn’t get in the top 30 early. It’s a tough race. You have to execute it well to have success.”

Koskei told The Sunflower in an interview on Sept. 12 that it was a personal goal of hers to earn All-American honors this season.

This was Koskei’s second-straight appearance at the national meet. Last season, she finished in 35th-place. She’s still just one of three All-Americans under Hunter.

The season wasn’t a bust for the Kenyan, who won her second straight American Athletic Conference individual title. She also finished third at the NCAA Midwest Regional to qualify for the national meet.

Hunter also said that Koskei ran the “best meet” of her career at Pre-Nationals in Oregon, where she placed seventh.

The Shockers now turn their attention to indoor track season, which kicks off on Dec. 4 in the Heskett Center for the Shocker Multis.