Oct. 4, 2005

The national rankings for this week (Oct. 3) have been released by the NCAA Division II Cross Country Coaches Association. The men's team of Wayne State has been ranked eighth, moving up four spots, while the women broke into the Top 25 for the first time this season, ranked 19th.

The men have been consistently ranked 12th or higher all season. This most recent poll comes on the heels of their 14th-place performance at the Lehigh University Paul Short Invitational 8k this past Saturday. Wayne State was led by senior Justin Kessler (Ionia, Mich.), who finished in eighth place out of 299 participants with a time of 24:09. This marked a vast improvement, as his previous best finish at this race was a 56th-place showing two years ago, when he ran a time of 25:34.67.

Junior Chris Mehay (New Baltimore, Mich./Anchor Bay) finished 33rd in a time of 24:39, freshman Abdullah Saleh (Dearborn, Mich./Fordson) ran a time of 24:57 for 66th place, and sophomore Kevin Christensen(Battle Creek, Mich./Pennfield) finished 97th in 25:15.

The women ran a 6k race at the Invitational, placing 32nd overall. Freshman Rachelle Malette (Windsor, Ont./Holy Names) was the top-finishing Warrior among the 310 participants, placing 80th with a time of 22:05.0. Junior Jenni Culbertson (Clinton Twp., Mich./Dakota) finished in 102nd place in 22:18.5.

Both cross country teams will move on to the Michigan Intercollegiate at Oakland University's golf course on Friday, Oct. 7.