Bates College

Leading the way for the Bates women's team at last weekend's Greater Louisville Cross Country Classic, as they have all season thus far, were senior Jessica Wilson (Cumberland, Maine) and junior Katherine Cook (South Burlington, Vt.). Wilson finished ninth overall out of 332 runners and Cook placed 12th, giving the Bobcats a great starting point on their way to their best race of the season.

But Bates put on a great performance, outracing three nationally ranked teams and finishing as the runner-up by only four points to No. 14 Hope College -- second place out of 39 teams overall. A cross country team can't fare as well as Bates did in a massive race like the so-called Division III Pre-Nationals without big performances all the way through the top five. And sophomore Katie Barker's (Burlington, Vt.) 19th-place performance Saturday perhaps represented the team's biggest breakthrough.

Barker was also Bates' third-fastest runner two weeks earlier at the Pineland Super XC Shootout, finishing sixth overall against Tufts, Wellesley and WPI. But in Louisville she ran a two-minute personal-record time over a 6-kilometer course, finishing in 22:29.97 at E.P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park, to be the site of the NCAA Championships on November 19. If she and the Bobcats continue to race like they did Saturday, Bates may find its way back to Louisville in November.