2000 NCAA Champions
2000 Colorado Women (l to r): Jodie Hughes, Lesley Higgins, Tera Moody, Kara Grgas-Wheeler, Catherine Wright, Sarah Gorton, Assistant Coach Jason Drake, Jen Fazioli
The 2000 women’s cross country team upended the defending national champion to claim the program’s first national title, the 18th overall at CU.
Coming off back-to-back team titles at the Big 12 and NCAA Mountain Region Championships, Colorado was the top-ranked team in the country entering the biggest race of the year. As is its goal each year, Colorado wanted to better its ranking, which would now be the biggest challenge in the program’s history.
Up for the challenge in wind-chill conditions that brought the late Midwest November temperature to 19-degrees below zero, Colorado methodically worked its way from the back of the pack to the front for the title. With a program-best 117 points, the Buffs finished 50 ahead of defending national champion Brigham Young.
Kara Grgas-Wheeler won the program’s first individual crown while freshman Sara Gorton became the second-highest finishing freshman in the race and highest in program history with an eighth place effort. Jodie Hughes locked up All-American honors with a 30th-place effort while Lesley Higgins (52nd) and Tera Moody (71st) rounded out the CU scoring.
In the championship sweep, Grgas-Wheeler won CU’s first individual title sans AIAW to complete the nation’s only undefeated campaign. With the title, Grgas-Wheeler capped off a 1,035-0 season repeating her Big 12 Conference and Mountain Region titles before capturing her third national title, first in the fall. Her win marked the first time since 1994 that the individual national champion was represented on the NCAA Championship team.
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2001 NCAA Champions
2001 Colorado Men (l to r): Jorge Torres, Ed Torres, Sean Smith, Aaron Blondeau, Dathan Ritzenhein, Jon Severy, Steve Slattery
The No. 1 ranked team in the country from the preseason polls to the national championship podium, the 2001 men’s season came to a crescendo with a one-point national championship victory over nemesis Stanford in Greenville, S.C. to bring home to the University its 19th national championship, the last remaining title that had previously eluded Colorado’s storied distance program.
The Buffs’ successful run at the national title capped off the program’s first undefeated season in which they were uncontested at the Rocky Mountain Shootout in Boulder, won their sixth straight Big 12 Conference title in Norman, Okla., claimed their ninth national qualifying race in 10 seasons and improved from their runner-up finish in 2000 at the national championships.
The one-point difference, 90-91, in the final score was the tightest in race history, tying the Villanova men’s 1970 85-86 win over Oregon.
The Buffs were paced by a pair of top-10 individual performances in the run to the title. Among the favorites to win the individual national title, junior Jorge Torres made no secret about his intentions to sacrifice an individual crown for the team title, and finished as the individual runner-up in his quest. Big 12 Conference Newcomer of the Year Dathan Ritzenhein finished fourth and was the highest finishing freshman in a national championship race since Adam Goucher’s second-place finish in 1994.
Junior Ed Torres improved 12 places from the previous year’s national runner-up race to finish 15th for his second All-American certificate. Steve Slattery battled back from a mid-season injury before going on to score as the Buffs’ fourth runner, 28th overall. Senior captain Sean Smith, was the final factor in clinching the title as CU’s No. 5 runner, 56th overall.
Fifth-year senior Aaron Blondeau who had competed in four NCAA Championship races since his 1997 freshman year, sat out the first two meets of the season due to injury before marking his return five weeks before the NCAA Championships where he came in as CU’s sixth runner in the national championship win.
Redshirt freshman Jon Severy reaped the benefits of his redshirt season in 2000 solidifying his role on the NCAA Championship travel squad where he came in as the Buffs’ final runner.
With his fourth NCAA cross country title since becoming head coach in 1995, head coach Mark Wetmore became the first coach in the history of the championship to win a men’s individual title (Adam Goucher, 1997), women’s individual title (Kara Grgas-Wheeler in 2000), women’s team title (2000) and men’s team crown at one school. |
