NEWVILLE, Pa. – The No. 20-ranked St. Olaf College women's cross country team recorded its third-straight top-20 national finish by placing 16th at the NCAA Division III Cross Country Championships on Saturday at Big Spring High School.

St. Olaf outperformed its national ranking by four spots for its 19th top-20 finish in program history in its 28th appearance at the national meet. The Oles, who compiled 445 points in the 32-team standings, were competing at the NCAA Championships for the 13th time in the last 16 seasons.

Despite losing one of her shoes half a mile into the 6K race, sophomore Lauren Walda was the top finisher for St. Olaf, improving 19 spots from last season with a 68th-place finish (22:14.0). The sophomore was 122nd at the one-mile mark before jumping up 54 spots over the remainder of the race despite running without one shoe.

In her third national meet, senior Julia Everest posted a 17-spot improvement from a year ago by placing 109th (22:36.5), moving up nearly 100 spots after the first mile. Sophomore Grace Moeller was 231st a mile in before nearly breaking into the top 100 with one kilometer remaining and settled for 128th (22:43.9) in her first time at the NCAA Championships.

Senior Katie Gebert and junior Sophie Abernethy rounded out the Oles' five scorers in 151st (22:51.8) and 165th (22:55.4), respectively, while junior Alison Bode and sophomore Ella Landis also cracked the top 250. Abernethy and Landis were competing at the national meet for the first times in their respective careers.

On a day when the top-four teams were separated by a record-low total of seven points, second-ranked Carleton College claimed the team title with 151 points, three ahead of top-ranked New York University, five ahead of the fifth-ranked University of Chicago, and seven ahead of sixth-ranked Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. Fiona Smith from the College of Saint Benedict set a new championship record of 19:54.1 to win the individual national title.