BETHLEHEM, Pa.—Sophomore Lydia Olivere (Wilmington, Del.) is the latest Villanova cross country runner to become an individual regional champion and the Wildcats used a terrific team performance from a lineup featuring four true freshmen to earn an automatic bid to the national championships next week.  Olivere won the 6K women's race at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional on Friday morning and Villanova came in a close second in the team race to punch a ticket to the NCAA Championships for the fifth straight year. 
 
This is the third straight season and the 10^th time in the last 14 years that the Wildcats have produced the Mid-Atlantic region's individual champion.  Olivere's winning time was 20:02.0 on the Goodman Campus Course at Lehigh and she continued an impressive season which now includes three victories in four starts.  She also won the BIG EAST title two weeks ago. 
 
Villanova had three of the first four runners across the finish line with the trio of Olivere, freshman Maggie Smith (Halifax, N.S.) and fifth-year senior Ann Campbell (Mission Hills, Kan.).  All three earned Mid-Atlantic All-Region honors and it is only the second time since the current regional format began in 2000 that the Wildcats have had three of the top four runners at the Mid-Atlantic meet. 
 
"I'm really happy for them," Villanova head coach Gina Procaccio said.  "We had four freshmen and a sophomore in our top six, and you were asking middle distance freshmen who don't have a strong cross country background to step up and run a 6K, and to do it under pressure.  You never know what you're going to get when you put them in that situation.  It's really impressive that they got it done and I am happy they get to experience the NCAA Championships as freshmen." 
 
Olivere is the Wildcats sixth runner to win the BIG EAST and Mid-Atlantic titles in the same year.  Procaccio recalled after Friday's race that neither of those accomplishments was the goal that Olivere wrote down at the beginning of the season. 
 
"I had them write down their goals at the beginning of the season and Lydia's goal was to get the team to nationals," Procaccio said.  "It was all based on getting the team there.  We really just approached it to not really focus on her as an individual to win the race but focusing on the team thing and what they all needed to do to help the team get in.  They looked at it like it was their job and they had to do it.  We needed our top three to be in the top five overall, which they were, and the back three also did what they had to do."
 
Smith came in third overall with a time of 20:15.8 and Campbell was fourth in 20:21.3.  The other scoring runners for Villanova were freshmen Brynne Sumner (Canton, Ga.) and Nikki Merrill (Portsmouth, R.I.), who placed 32^nd (20:57.0) and 37^th (21:04.0), respectively.  Not far behind was another first-year member of the team, freshman Anna Helwigh (Soborg, Denmark) in 60^th place with a time of 21:33.4.  Senior McKenna Keegan (West Grove, Pa.), a 400 meter and 800 meter specialist on the track, came in 64^th in 21:40.1.
 
"Nikki and Brynne were 2:07 800 meter runners in high school," Procaccio said.  "They're middle distance runners.  Maggie is a freshman as well, but she at least has a cross country background and has run at world cross.  It's still a lot to ask of her to make sure she is in the top five, but she did it.  I tell all of them that they aren't freshmen, they're just athletes on the team with a job to do.  They got it done."
 
The NCAA Championships take place on the LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course in Terre Haute, Ind. next Saturday (November 23) at 11:15 a.m.  It is the 12^th time in the last 16 years that the national meet will take place at the site.