Cross Country

Head coach Gary Wilson’s career ended over the weekend as the Gophers women’s cross country team finished 22nd at the NCAA championships.

Minnesota entered the event ranked 25th in the nation.

“It was a nice way to go out,” Wilson said in a release. “The thing that was so pleasing to me was that these kids were just warriors today. Every single kid just fought like mad.

“It was a really special day,” he said. “I couldn’t have ended on a better note.”

Minnesota’s women’s cross country team will end its season this weekend, regardless of where the team finishes at the NCAA championships.

That’s the reason assistant coach Sarah Hesser said the season’s final meet is so enjoyable.

“There’s nothing to qualify for after this,” Hesser said. “In that way, even though it’s the national meet, it’s a little less pressure filled than [the NCAA] regional to get there.”

The Gophers women’s cross country team extended head coach Gary Wilson’s career another week by earning a NCAA championship bid this weekend.

Minnesota finished third at the 31-team NCAA Midwest regional in Springfield, Mo., on Friday and was awarded an at-large bid to the championships a day later.

Advancing past the regional is nothing new for Minnesota, as the team has now advanced to eight consecutive NCAA championships.

Back in September, the Gophers women’s cross country team ran an intrasquad meet that matched the entire team against itself.

The winner of the meet was Laura Docherty, and in a sense she hasn’t looked back since.

The Gophers men’s cross country team will travel to St. John’s this weekend for the Fall Finale, where its second group of runners will end the season against lesser competition.

“The Fall Finale will be basically for guys that didn’t get a chance to run at the Big Ten,” head coach Steve Plasencia said. “It’s an opportunity for some of them to get one last race.”

Minnesota sent 13 runners to last year’s Fall Finale, and those 13 finished in order atop the leaderboard.

Laura Docherty never finished in the top 10 in the state of Minnesota during her high school career. As a junior in college, she hadn’t finished in the top 10 at the Big Ten championships — until Sunday.

 Docherty finished ninth in Sunday’s 6,000-meter Big Ten meet with a time of 20 minutes, 36 seconds, helping the Gophers finish fourth out of 12 teams.

“That tells you a lot about how far she’s come,” assistant coach Sarah Hesser said. “It’s just a testament to her work ethic.

Both the men’s and women’s Gophers cross country teams will roll into East Lansing, Mich., for the Big Ten championships this weekend with a familiar strategy: start strong.

Both teams will run Sunday at Michigan State University’s Forest Akers Golf Course. The men will run eight kilometers, and the women will run six. Nine runners will compete from each team.

Men’s head coach Steve Plasencia said the Big Ten meet is the team’s smallest of the season in terms of the number of athletes competing. But he said starting strong will still be key.

The level of competition at Saturday’s Jack’s Run will be low — but that doesn’t mean that the stakes aren’t high.

The race, which will take place at 5 p.m. on Saturday at Les Bolstad Golf Course, is open to the public, and proceeds will be split between two charities.

The race is named after Jack Johnson, the Gophers’ former equipment manager. Johnson died in February 2006 of cancer. Half the proceeds will go to the Jack Johnson Endowed Scholarship.