LOUISVILLE, KY -- It was a fabulous finish to a phenomenal freshman cross country season for Allie Ostrander on Saturday.
The Boise State freshman from Soldotna finished second at the NCAA Division I cross country championships in Louisville, Kentucky.
Ostrander covered the 6-kilometer course at E.P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park in 19 minutes, 33.6 seconds -- 5 seconds behind Notre Dame senior Molly Seidel.
"I was really happy with it. I'm so surprised that I finished second," Ostrander said. "Going into the season I was just like, 'I want to get All-American (honors),' and to exceed that goal by so much is really special.
"I would've loved to have gone out and gotten the win today, obviously that's what everyone wanted that went into this race, but second place is good and it gives me a little bit of fire for the indoor and outdoor seasons."
Although Ostrander narrowly missed becoming only the second freshman to win the national title, she matched the best finish in school history, equaling Emma Bates' second-place finish for the Broncos two years ago.
It was the best finish in history by an Alaskan, male or female, at the Division I championships.
In near-perfect running conditions -- race-time temperature was 53 degrees under mostly cloudy skies -- the diminutive Ostrander broke out early with the lead pack. Seidel, Ostrander and Arkansas senior Dominique Scott broke away from the group with about 2,000 meters to go. Seidel and Ostrander then surged away from Scott about a kilometer from the finish before Seidel eventually pulled away to victory.
"I kind of knew it was time to just start kicking into that next gear," said Seidel, the reigning NCAA outdoor champ at 10,000 meters. "Knowing the amount of talent that both Dom and Allie O have I knew that I was going to have to try and make my move because you never know what two girls who have that much talent are going to be able to do on that final kick, so I didn't want to leave it down to chance.
"If someone's going to beat me, I'm going to try to make them bleed to do it."
Ostrander said the pace at the start of the race was fairly fast.
"Then when we got to 3-K it picked up a little and it just progressively got faster from there. At 5-K, Molly Seidel really put the hammer down and tried to gap us.
"I tried to stay right on her heels, but in the end she just had a little bit more left than me."
It appeared that Ostrander was completely out of gas at the end. She fell to the ground after crossing the finish line.
"I tripped over the mat," she explained with a smile, "and then I didn't really have the energy to get up."
Ostrander finished first or second in every meet she raced in this season, winning the Dual in Speedway Meadow, the Wisconsin Adidas Invitational, the Mountain West Championship and the West Region Championship. Early in the season she traveled to Wales, where she won the junior women's race at the World Mountain Running Championship.
"Overall I'm really happy with the way my freshman season went and I'm glad I could at least get a low score for my team," she said.
Led by Ostrander, Boise State finished 11th in the women's standings with 330 points. New Mexico, one of the Broncos' conference rivals, won its first national title with 49 points.
In the men's D-I national championship race, South High graduate and BYU senior Aaron Fletcher finished 81st overall, covering the 10-K course in 30:49.3, to help the Cougars to a 12th-place finish.
After the races In Louisville were over, Ostrander tweeted about another race that happened Saturday.
"I would just like to say that my sister became an all-American today," she wrote, referring to older sister Taylor's 26th-place finish for Willamette University at the Division III national championships in Winneconne, Wisconsin.