All-Americans   Year by Year Results

In 25 years of varsity competition the Bombers have made 17 trips to the NCAA championship meet, won 11 state titles, eight ECAC championships and the first five Empire 8 crowns and produced 19 all-Americans. Ithaca’s NCAA championship meet appearances and all-Americans both rank seventh among Division III schools.

 

Women’s cross country made its debut as a varsity sport in 1982. Participation in the sport at Ithaca had previously been limited to female runners working out with the men’s cross country team and running men’s distances in races.

 

The Bombers got off to a strong start under their inaugural coach, Bill Ware. Ithaca placed second at the New York State championship meet. Marisa Sutera, a 1993 inductee into Ithaca’s Hall of Fame, was one of the team’s top runners that season.

 

A year later, Betsy Kneale became Ithaca’s first all-American (her eighth-place finish at nationals is still the highest by a Bomber freshman) after qualifying for the NCAA meet as an individual. In 1984 the Bombers made their first appearance as a team at nationals after winning the state, ECAC and NCAA regional championships. At the national meet, all-Americans Cathy Livingston and Gabriella Fritelli paced Ithaca to a third-place finish – the first of four straight top-three showings for the team.

 

Fritelli and Colleen Skelly brought home all-America accolades in 1985 and a year later, behind the all-America efforts of Skelly (17th) and freshman Jannette Bonrouhi (10th), the Bombers recorded their highest finish – a second-place effort. Another third-place finish came in 1987 with a school-record three Ithaca runners recording all-America finishes: Skelly, Bonrouhi and Livingston. All three are members of the Ithaca College Athletic Hall of Fame.

 

Bonrouhi recorded the program’s two best individual placings at the NCAA championships over the next two years, taking fifth in 1988 and seventh as a senior. She remains the school’s only four-time all-American. The annual alumni race, which opens the cross country season, is named for Bonrouhi, who died in 2000.

 

Ithaca’s stretch of state titles reached eight in 1991, Ware’s final season (of his first stint) as Bomber coach. A year later Jim Nichols, in his only year directing the team, led Ithaca to a runner-up showing at regionals and a 12th-place finish at the NCAA championships.

 

Coaches Adrean Scott and Kelli Bert led the Bombers over the next five years. Under coach Scott, Moira Strong qualified for the the NCAA Championship in 1993. In 1995, Melanie Della Rocco qualified for nationals, finishing 117th. Bert guided the team to fourth place at the regional qualifier (the team’s best showing in four years) in her last season.

 

Ware returned as coach in 1998; a year later Cara Devlin became the first Bomber in eight seasons to compete at the NCAA championships (she earned all-America honors with her 18th-place finish) and in 2000 the Bombers were back at nationals as a team, placing 10th behind freshman Amanda Laytham’s 10th-place finish. They have competed at nationals each of the past seven years, with top-10 finishes in 2002 (seventh) and 2005 (eighth).

 

Laytham, who won the ECAC Robbins Scholar-Athlete award and an NCAA postgraduate scholarship and was named the NCAA’s New York State Woman of the Year after graduating in 2004, led Ithaca to three more trips to the national championship meet (including a seventh-place finish in 2002) and earned academic all-America honors three times in her career.

 

Fifty-five different Bombers have broken 19 minutes on a 5,000-meter course, while 12 runners have broken 18 minutes. Bomber runners have recorded 266 sub-19:00 5,000-meter runs in 25 years; 40 of those performances have been under 18 minutes.