Dalton State’s women’s cross country team sets high standard

Published 10:19 pm Sunday, December 7, 2014

Dalton State College is building an athletic program that all of Northwest Georgia can be proud of and the future looks bright for all of the Roadrunners’ athletic endeavors.

And while many other honors and accolades are surely to come on the hardwood, on the field and on the courses, there will only be one first when if comes to bringing home a conference championship.

This is the first academic year in which the school is eligible to compete for conference titles in the Southern State Athletic Conference since Dalton State re-launched its athletic program last year. The women’s cross country team will be the answer to the trivia question of which sport won the school’s first SSAC title.

The Lady Roadrunners won the conference championship on Nov. 8 in Clinton, Miss., and the team of Nayelo Jacobo, Natalie Espinoza-Hensley, Kuersten Gallivan, Gloria Pascual, Olivia Bird, Mallory Edwards, Ediht Corona and Jessica Brock beat runner-up Brenau by 13 points for the title. Espinoza-Hensley led the team with a fifth-place finish overall, and all of the counting scores for the team were in the top 25 with three in the top 10.

The team was recently honored by the Dalton City Council with a proclamation, and it is surely the first of many more to come.

Since the college hired Derek Waugh as the school’s athletic director to re-introduce an athletic program which had lay dormant for decades, the main goal has been education and success. Coaches Margie Bruner and Andy Meyer have brought that to the women’s cross country program and have set a high standard for all of the other Roadrunner teams to set their sights upon.