Kent State University
NCAA Championships
Ba to Race at NCAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday
11/18/2022 11:57:00 AM | Cross Country
Kent State sophomore Baidy Ba will continue his historic campaign at the 2022 NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships on Saturday (Nov. 19). Hosted by Oklahoma State University, the championships will be held at The Greiner Family OSU Cross Country Course in Stillwater.
Live coverage of the meet begins at 10 a.m. on ESPNU. The starting gun for the women's 6k race is scheduled for 10:20 a.m. ET, while Ba will head to the starting line for the men's 10 k race at 11:10 a.m. ET.
Road to Stillwater
Ba earned his spot at the national meet as the top finisher from a non-qualifying team at the NCAA Great Lakes Regional Championships last Friday. He placed seventh overall in a Golden Flashes cross country 10k record time of 30:07.0.
Two weeks before that, Ba made history as the first Golden Flash to run a sub-24:00 8k at the Mid-American Conference Championships. His time of 23:55.6 was good for seventh place and All-MAC First Team honors.
Ba has posted top-10 finishes in all five races this season, helping Kent State's men to its best season in a decade. The Flashes appeared in the USTFCCA Great Lakes Regional Poll for the first time since 2014. After peaking at No. 12, Kent State was ranked 14th in the final ranking of the regular season. The team placed fifth at the MAC Championships, its best finish since 2011.
Kent State at the NCAA Championships
The Flashes have competed at the NCAA Cross Country Championships twice as a team (1974, 1975) with 20 individuals previously qualifying. Ba joins Jim Loveless (1991) and Michael Heller (2012) as Kent State's only qualifiers over the past 50 years and aims to earn the eighth All-American honor in program history with a top-40 finish. Loveless was the last Flash to do so, finishing 19th in 1991.
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Players Mentioned
