MORGANTOWN — For the second consecutive season, WVU distance runner Ceili McCabe earned All-American honors in cross country, but she fell short in becoming the Mountaineers’ first-ever national champion.
McCabe placed 24th overall Saturday, at the Greiner Family Cross Country course in Stillwater, Okla., to earn All-American.
Her time of 20:03.2 was just under 33 seconds behind North Carolina State sophomore Katelyn Tuohy, who set a course record with a winning time of 19:27.7 in the 6,000-meter race.
In the men’s national championship race, which covers 10,000 meters, former University High standout Josh Edwards placed 212th overall with a time of 31:12.6.
Edwards is a freshman at Oregon and he was the No. 5 runner for the Ducks, who placed 16th in the country.
McCabe’s All-American honors helped the Mountaineers place 27th out of 31 competing teams. WVU finished with 562 points and also saw Charlotte Wood (117th) and Mikaela Lucki (126th) place in the top 150 of the 254 competing runners.
North Carolina State won the women’s national championship with 114 points.
McCabe took third overall at last year’s national championships — the highest finish by any WVU runner in school history — and seemed poised to contend for an individual championship on Saturday after winning the Big 12 and Mid-Atlantic regional in recent weeks.
It was the second consecutive year that McCabe won the conference and regional titles.
As Florida sophomore Parker Valby broke away from the pack Saturday to take the early lead, McCabe was in second place at the 2,000-meter mark.
But, Valby hardly slowed and neither did the pace of the race.
How fast was it? The top 11 finishers all beat the previous course record.
Tuohy began to push away from the rest of the pack and went after Valby and finally surpassed her in the final 1,000 meters.
Meanwhile, McCabe kept sliding back.
“It is very obvious that Ceili will be disappointed with this performance, as no one had higher expectations for this race than her,” WVU head coach Sean Cleary said. “That said, Ceili emerged from the season healthier than she began it and brings home another first-team All-American.”
She fell back to ninth at the 4,000-meter mark and was 11th with 1,000 meters remaining and then finished 24th overall.
WVU qualified as a team for the third consecutive season. Rounding out its top five runners were Katherine Dowie (187th) and Jeanne Reix Charat (224th).
