SCAD Women’s Cross Country makes program history

Written by Leah Kilde. Photos by David Fuller and Chris Cinnamon.

SCAD’s Women’s Cross Country team has taken the Sun Conference Championship title for the past three years. But this year – for the first time in conference history – the Bees finished with a perfect score. After the conference championships, the women’s team and two individual qualifiers from the men’s team traveled to Vancouver, Washington, for the NAIA National Championships, at the end of finals week. The women’s team ended up placing 16th in the team ranking, the best in program history since 2005.

Coach Knapp discussed the 2023 cross country season in an interview post-competition. He began by reflecting on the class of new recruits SCAD acquired this season. “In recruiting, we had the best year I’ve had for the men’s and women’s teams,” he said. This class included the season’s top two runners, graduate student and former Division I runner Alex Midgett and freshman Edith Manfred. Many members of SCAD’s previous championship team stayed for the 2023 season.

The success of the Bees this season wasn’t exactly forecasted in the Sun Conference preseason polling, which ranked the women’s team in second place. “We knew we were better than that, so that gave us a bit of a chip on our shoulder,” said Coach Knapp. The Bees did not let the pre-season ranking shake their confidence and continued to put forth their best efforts.

“My priority was doing the day-to-day and taking care of business,” Coach Knapp said about the 2023 cross-country season. After a season full of early morning runs, drills and lifts, the Bees excelled at the Sun Conference meet in Ave Maria, Florida, and scored a historic perfect score.

Based on their regular season successes, the women’s Cross Country team knew they were likely to win the conference title. This put the team and Coach Knapp in a unique position. “The thing you have to combat is when you know you’re better than everyone else, it can be hard to go out and still give a full effort,” Coach Knapp said. From the beginning of the race, the top 5 runners wore the SCAD uniform. “Once we had established those gaps, we needed to make sure we maintained them and got our runners around the course safely and healthy.” 

It was hardly a surprise that SCAD won the Conference title for the third year in a row, but history was made when the last scoring runner, Valentina Garcia, passed the finish line. For the first time ever in the Sun Conference, on either the men’s or women’s side, a conference title was won with a perfect score. A perfect score in cross country means that the top 5 runners represent the same team. Their individual placement of one through five adds up to a total score of 15.

The conference win automatically qualified the Bees for the NAIA National Cross Country Championships in mid-November. “The goal was just to go and run to the best of our abilities,” said Coach Knapp. The terrain in Washington varies significantly from what the team was used to in Savannah, so Knapp knew that the hills would be a challenge on race day. But when the Bees placed 16th, another program landmark was set as this is the highest national standing SCAD has accomplished in cross country since 2005.

The 2023 cross country season has now wrapped up, and many runners are beginning to get ready for the upcoming indoor track and field season. “We always want to set ourselves up so that we can be a little bit better every year,” said Coach Knapp.