Oct. 2, 2010

South Bend, Ind. - Running her first race of the 2010 season, senior Lucy van Dalen (Wanganui, New Zealand) won the prestigious Notre Dame Invitational on Friday afternoon. Twin sister Holly van Dalen (Wanganui, New Zealand) finished sixth as Stony Brook finished fifth out of 24 teams.

Lucy ran the race in 16:22, beating Sheila Reid of national power Villanova by four seconds. Holly came in at 16:33.

"This was a very exciting race for the twins and the team today," head coach Andy Ronan said. "Lucy and Holly are All American's on the track, now with today's performance they have put themselves in a position to achieve it in Cross Country. They and the team still have work to do, and we need to get better in order for us to achieve the goals set out for the season. But today was a wonderful start to the competitive season."

Stony Brook, which entered the meet ranked among the top 35 in the country, finished ahead of #3 Washington, #8 Princeton, #17 UTEP, #20 BYU, #21 SMU, #24 Iowa and #30 Notre Dame.

The twins got great support from freshman Annie Keown (Auckland, New Zealand), who had a great run, finishing in 24th (17:10), Junior Hayley Green (Wellington, New Zealand) finished in 39th (17:23) and freshman Olivia Burne (Palmerston North, New Zealand) in 83rd (17:54) was the 5th scorer. Junior Patricia Barry (Tipperary, Ireland) finished in 131st place (18:26) junior Kristal Conklin (Middletown, N.Y.) 152nd (18:42) and senior Carolina Cortes (Woodmere, N.Y.) 158th (18:48).

The women's team will be back in action next weekend at the Metropolitan Championships at Van Cortlandt Park.