LOS ANGELES – Cal State L.A.’s women’s cross country All-American
Vivien Wadeck has been named the California Collegiate Athletic Association Female Cross Country Runner of the Week for the week of Oct. 5-11, the conference announced on Monday.
Wadeck won the weekly conference honors for the second time this season and for the fifth time in her Cal State L.A. cross country career. She won it three times last season.
Wadeck won the individual championship at the Vanguard Invitational on Saturday with a time of 17:23 over a 5K course at Costa Mesa’s Fairview Park. She won the race by 20 seconds over Concordia’s Rocio Pelayo. Wadeck and Pelayo were the only two runners in a field of 126 who completed the course in under 18 minutes.
She helped the Golden Eagles, ranked 20th in the country, finish in a tie for fifth out of 12 teams in the competition. The field included a “B” team from USC and three nationally-ranked NAIA schools.
Wadeck, the defending CCAA individual champion, placed eighth in the country last season for the best Cal State L.A. individual finish since 1994. The Golden Eagles finished 13th in the country, their third consecutive top-15 finish. Cal State L.A. was ranked 20th in the most recent national rankings and fifth in the West Region.
The win was the second for Wadeck in her Cal State L.A. cross country career. She won the CCAA Championships last year and also placed second in a pair of meets, the Cal State Fullerton Season Opener and the Slippery Rock Invitational in Slippery Rock, PA.
Wadeck opened this season with an eighth-place finish at the UC Riverside Invitational, a performance that earned her CCAA Runner of the Week honors.
Cal State L.A. will return to action on Friday at the Northridge Invitational.