KUTZTOWN, Pa. – The 2025 Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Women's Cross Country Championships are set to be hosted by Edinboro University this Saturday, Oct. 25, with 17 teams starting competition at 10 a.m. at the Doug Watts Cross Country Course.
Last season's edition, hosted by Kutztown at the North Campus Cross Country Course, saw Slippery Rock repeat as conference champions for the second straight year. The Golden Bears finished fourth as a team with 122 points, while Deandra Young (East Stroudsburg, Pa./Stroudsburg) and Maura Lenhart (Center Valley, Pa./Southern Lehigh) earned All-PSAC First Team honors for their respective 10th and 14th place finishes.
After being selected as the fourth-best team in the conference in the preseason poll, the Golden Bears have turned in stellar performances at each of its four meets this season. The Maroon and Gold opened the year with a pair of first-place finishes at the WCU Season Opener and the DII/DIII Challenge, put up a strong showing in a packed Paul Short Run field at Division I Lehigh University and finished with a solid individual performance from rookie Aubrey Carlson (Lebanon, N.J./North Hunterdon) at the DeSales Invitational.
Head coach Ray Hoffman's team boasts a deep roster of talented runners, headlined by Lenhart, who recorded the top overall time at both the 5k WCU Season Opener (18:51.3) and the 6k DII/DIII Challenge (22:34.90). The aforementioned Young is joined by graduate student Sophia Knerr (Columbia, N.J./North Warren Regional), junior Lizzie Brown (Wallingford, Conn./Mark T. Sheehan), sophomore Olivia Solomon (Sunbury, Pa./Shikellamy) and freshman Faith Belote (Easton, Pa./Easton) as runners who have turned in top-ten marks in at least one race this season.
Kutztown sits at No. 3 in the latest Atlantic Region rankings from the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association, trailing only top-ranked Davis & Elkins and No. 2 East Stroudsburg. It represents an improvement from the fifth-place regional ranking in the preseason, and if the third-place ranking stands in competition at the NCAA Atlantic Region Championships, the Golden Bears will automatically qualify as a team for the NCAA DII Championships in late November.
Live timing and streaming pages, as well as the PSAC Championship homepage, can be found at the above links.
Competitors from the PSAC Cross Country Championships will look to advance to the NCAA Atlantic Region Championships on Saturday, Nov. 8, at the West Branch Cross Country Course in Lock Haven, Pa., with the hopes of making it to the NCAA DII Championships at Wayne E. Dannehl National Cross Country Course in Kenosha, Wis. On Saturday, Nov. 22.
