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Oct. 12, 2006

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - The Navy women's cross country team (4-0) will wrap up its regular season when Army comes to the USNA Cross Country Course on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. in the annual Star Meet.

Fans planning to attend the Star Meet should plan on arriving early due to limited available parking at the USNA Golf Course and along Greenbury Point Road.

"It's been a great season so far, having eight seniors, all of which are in the top 12 --- that's a first," stated Navy head coach Karen Boyle. "They provide great leadership and experience which is why we're 4-0. We would like nothing less than going 5-0 and bringing the N-star back to Navy."

Navy and Army have met on one previous occasion in 2006, racing at Penn State's Spiked Shoe Invitational on Sept. 23. The Midshipmen tallied a team score of 132 points to finish fourth, while the Black Knights placed eight with a 279-point team tally. Navy had 12 of its runners cross the finish line prior to Army's fifth-fastest competitor.

The Midshipmen hold an all-time 11-9 advantage over the Black Knights, including a 7-3 mark in Annapolis, despite the fact that Army has won each of the last-five Star Meets. Last year on a rain-soaked course at West Point, Navy fell by a score of 20-41.

In that race, Navy's Justine Whipple (Duxbury, Mass.) won the meet with a time of 24:43.89, finishing 37.34 seconds ahead of Army's top runner. Five Army runners followed Whipple's time, three of which have graduated, before Erin Demchko's (Pearl River, N.Y.) seventh-place time of 25:55.25.

Navy's senior class could play a significant role in trying to bring claim the N-Star for the first time since 2000. Whipple has recorded the team's fastest time in each of last-nine races, dating back to the start of the 2005 season. During that stretch, she has placed among the top-15 seven times, including in all-three races this year. Competing at the Stanford Invitational two weeks ago, she finished 15th with a 21:18 clocking against a field comprised of several All-Americans and the top-ranked team in the country.

Classmate Emily Castro (Centennial, Colo.) has been one of Navy's top-two finishers in all of Navy's meets this year. Castro boasted the team's fastest time, fifth overall, in Navy's Salty Sea Dog Invitational on Sept. 16. The senior also holds three top-15 performances on the year and finished 30th at the Stanford Invitational.

Senior Allison Barlow (Orange Park, Fla.) has scored in all three of the races she has competed in this season. Barlow posted a season-best time of 22:34 to place 50th at the Stanford Invitational two weeks ago. Junior Kyleigh Millhouse (Boiling Springs, Pa.) joins Castro as the lone Navy runner to land among the scoring-five in all four meets this year. Millhouse has boasted Navy's third-quickest time in each of the past-three meets, highlighted by an 11th-place performance in the Salty Sea Dog Invitational.

Following this weekend's meet, the Midshipmen next travel to the Patriot League Championship in Hamilton, N.Y., on Saturday, Oct. 28.