University of Tennessee Athletics
University of Tennessee
NCAA Cross Country Championships
Blaase Earns All-American Honors at NCAAs
November 21, 2015 | Track & Field
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Tennessee senior Chelsea Blaase finished 14th at the 2015 NCAA Division I Women's Cross Country Championship on Saturday at E.P. Tom Sawyer Park to earn All-America honors for the second-straight year.
Blaase ran with the front group for most of the race and finished at 20:07.70. She was in seventh place at the 2K mark at 6:40.70 and battled with the best to the final turn.
"It was a great race," Blaase said. "I wish I could have finished better than I did, but it was very competitive the whole way through. It was great having everyone there to support me in my family and friends. It was a phenomenal race, a hard battle the whole way through. We got out really fast and really hard and it kept rolling from start to finish. It was fast and it was great."
Notre Dame senior Molly Seidel won the individual crown at 19:28.60 and Boise State freshman Allie Ostrander (19:33.60) and Arkansas senior Dominique Scott (19:40.90) rounded out the top three. New Mexico won the women's team title with 49 points and Colorado finished second with 129 points.
"Chelsea ran a phenomenal race," Tennessee director of track & field Beth Alford Sullivan said. "It was one of the most competitively deep NCAA Championships I have seen maybe ever or definitely in a long time. The field was out and out hard and did not break open. There was probably a pretty good 20-25 girls up until the finish; they were coming in pretty hot. Chelsea put herself right in the mix and just competed from within, really hung on, dug deep and finished in the top 14. It was just an amazing race today. We were very proud of her."
Blaase, who placed 10th at the 2014 NCAA Championships, joins Brenda Webb (1977, 1978) and Kathy Bryant-Hadler (1980, 1981, 1982) as Tennessee's only multi-year women's cross country All-Americans. Blaase, Webb and Bryant-Hadler are also the only three UT women to post multiple top-15 finishes at nationals.
Blaase wraps one of the most impressive Tennessee cross country careers. She posted 13-straight top-10 finishes over a two-year span (2013-15) with 10 top-three finishes and four career wins. Blaase punched her second ticket to the NCAA Championships last week when she won the 2015 NCAA South Regional in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
She said that all of the support and well wishes she received from other Tennessee teams, students and departments was a great boost for her over the last few days.
"I could not be happier with the support that I had just going into this race from all of the other departments at UT," Blaase said. "It was absolutely phenomenal just having the University be with me whole time. It was great, I was not out there by myself."
Her rise to national elite status over the last four years has been an inspiring journey of perseverance, hard work and a willingness to evolve as an athlete. After a frustrating freshman campaign in which she was finishing in the middle or at the back of the pack, Blaase committed the summer of 2013 to self-improvement and emerged as a top-20 and top-10 finisher as a sophomore. In 2014 she became one of the best in the country and qualified for her first trip to nationals, where she became the first Tennessee women's cross country runner to be named an All-American since Sarah Bowman 2008 and UT's first top-10 finisher at nationals since Patty Wiegand in 1989.
"I went into this race thinking, 'This is my last race.' But it never really felt like it," Blaase said. "My freshman year, no one knew that I would end up here and I'm just so thankful. I'm so happy that I did what I did and got where I needed to be. It has been a phenomenal ride from start to finish from freshman year all the way to here and a lot of hard work day in and day out."
Blaase, who earned 2015 All-America honors in indoor track (5,000m) and outdoor track (10,000m), will be back in action in January when Tennessee opens its 2016 indoor track & field season.
