LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Three of America East’s top cross country student-athletes will compete at the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championship at Louisville on Saturday. America East individual champions Hassan Omar from UMBC and Christina Melian from Stony Brook, along with New Hampshire’s Laura Rose Donegan, were among the 76 individuals to qualify for the championship.
The women’s 6K race will begin at 12 p.m. while the men’s 10K starts at 1 p.m. Both races will be streamed on NCAA.com.
Omar, UMBC’s first America East individual champion, qualified for NCAAs with his third-place finish in last week's NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional. He is the first Retriever in program history to qualify for the championship race.
Melian qualified for the NCAA Championship with a third-place finish at the NCAA Northeast Regionals at Franklin Park in Boston on Nov. 13. The junior has won three races this year – the America East Championship Oct. 31, the Battle in Beantown Sept. 25 and Stony Brook Season Opener Sept. 5. Melian finished 10th at NCAA Pre-Nationals Oct. 17.
Donegan placed sixth at the NCAA Northeast Regional and received an at-large selection to the field. She placed second at the America East Championship and helped lead UNH to its third-straight team title.
Thirty-eight individuals were selected to participate in each championship through an automatic qualifier and at-large selection process. All individual qualifiers finished in the top 25 in their regions.