Mizzou’s Karissa Schweizer wins NCAA cross country championship in dramatic finish

Published by Alec Lewis/Kansas City Star on November 19th, 2016

Missouri women’s cross country has a national champion for the first time, and Karissa Schweizer did it in dramatic fashion.

Pushed to the brink by Michigan senior Erin Finn with the finish line in sight, Schweizer took the lead with a late kick in the final 400 meters of the 6,000-meter NCAA Division I championship race Saturday in Terre Haute, Ind., finishing first in 19 minutes, 41.6 seconds.

Schweizer, a junior from Urbandale, Iowa, has won three straight meets. She became the first individual women’s NCAA champion at MU since 1989 and the school’s first NCAA cross country champion since Keith Bacon won the men’s title in 1955.

She is Missouri’s third individual national champion in 2016, joining Missouri wrestler J’den Cox and swimmer Fabian Schwingenschlogl.

Weeks ago, in Fayetteville, Ark., she won the Southeastern Conference championship — Missouri’s first league title since 1997 — which led to her earning the SEC women’s runner of the year award.