This past Friday, Notre Dame competed in the ACC championship in Cary, North Carolina, ending the day with an individual champion for the second year in a row as sophomore Anna Rohrer won her first conference title, repeating Molly Seidel’s feat a year ago.
Running through the wooded trails of WakeMed Soccer Park, Rohrer recorded a personal record with a time of 19:26.4, steadily distancing herself from the field and finishing a full 25 seconds in front of the second-place runner, recording All-ACC honors in the process. Following up a second-place finish at the ACCs last season with a conference championship this year, Rohrer said the award means a lot for both her and Notre Dame cross country.
“It definitely means a lot to me because it’s representing the University well, and because I know it helped out my team a lot,” Rohrer said. “Last year, Molly won ACCs, and so I really wanted to start a streak for Notre Dame women.”
Sophomore Annie Heffernan and graduate student Danielle Aragon also recorded personal bests with their times and earned All-ACC honors, finishing in sixth and ninth, respectively. Senior Lexi Pelletier, who finished in 23rd, and sophomore Rachel DaDamio, who finished in 38th, rounded out the top five for the 19th-ranked women’s team, who finished in second place overall behind No. 3 North Carolina State. With a strong team performance landing them in second place, Rohrer said the women’s team accomplished what they set out to accomplish.
“Our team overall did really, really well,” Rohrer said. “We set goals together as a team at the beginning of the season and wrote them down and put them in the locker room, and one of the goals was to finish better than we did last year at the ACCs, and so definitely as a team we all pulled together and finished second instead of third, like we did last year.”
On the men’s side of the competition, Notre Dame was led by sophomore Anthony Williams, who finished in 28th place and set a personal record with his time of 24:02.1. Senior Chris Marco, senior Jacob Dumford, sophomore Brent Kennedy and freshman Peter Monahan capped off the top five on the men’s side, who finished 10th overall in the competition. The men’s team featured three freshmen and two sophomores in the race, as freshmen Kevin Salvano and Tyler Keslin also contributed to the Irish effort, finishing in 88th and 94th, respectively. Keslin said like the women’s team, the men’s team accomplished its personal goal, while also highlighting some key performances from the day.
“I think that we did as well as we expected to,” Keslin said. “Our goal was to place [anywhere from] sixth to tenth, and we ended up placing tenth, so we achieved that goal. We had some really great performances from [Anthony] Williams and Chris Marco, along with freshmen Peter Monahan — I know he was pretty happy with his performance because he broke 25 minutes, [and] that’s a big achievement for a freshman.”
Next up for the Irish is the NCAA Great Lakes Regional on Nov. 11. The competition will be held in Madison, Wisconsin, on the Zimmer Championship Course.
