MALIBU, Calif. – Gonzaga's
Rosina Machu placed first at the 2023 West Coast Conference Women's Cross Country Championships Saturday. She finished as champion with a time of 20:28.8.
Machu was the first Bulldog WCC champion since Shelby Mills placed first at the 2015 conference championships in Spokane. Cheska Fairbanks was the only other Zag WCC champion in 1996.
"I think it's just her showing she is one of the best runners in the country," GU Head Coach
Jake Stewart said. "To win a conference championship by that amount over some really good athletes, never really tested throughout, was really impressive on a really tough course. I think she continues to show that she is the real deal. There are some really exciting things in front of her the next few weeks."
Machu's win was dominant. She led for nearly the entirety of the race and continued to stretch the gap between her and the rest of the field. The sophomore finished 24 seconds ahead of second-place Laura Pellicoro of Portland. Machu earned First Team All-WCC honors for the second straight season after last season's seventh-place finish.
Machu was one of three Top-5 finishes by GU Saturday, as
Sadie Tuckwood and
Jessica Frydenlund also earned First Team All-WCC honors in fourth and fifth place. Tuckwood crossed the line at 21:08.3 and Frydenlund finished at 21:25.7.
Led by that trio, Gonzaga placed second as a team, just six points off team champion Portland. It's only the third top two finish by the Bulldogs at the conference championship in the past 20 years. GU was second in the 2021 race and first in 2015.
The trio made it three consecutive years that at least two GU women's runners finished in the top 10 at the conference championships.
Alexi Fogo just missed out on second team honors placing 17
th with a time of 22:20.5.
Alicia Anderson (22:23.3) and
Anna Grabowski (22:27.7) were 19
th and 20
th.
UP NEXT
The Zags head to the NCAA West Regional Championships Nov. 10 in Sacramento, Calif. The women's race begins at 10 a.m.
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