Trotters help Stanford win NCAA XC title WATERLO, IOWA — National championships continue to follow Katy and Amanda Trotter. The twins led Red Bank Regional to indoor and outdoor national championships and a Penn Relays crown in the Distance Medley during their extraordinary scholastic careers. Now freshmen at Stanford (Calif.) University, the high school All-Americans are part of another national championship team. The newcomers helped the Cardinal women win the NCAA Division I national cross country championship on Nov. 24 at the University of Northern Iowa, Waterloo. The championships were held on the Irv Warren Golf Course and run over 6,000 meters. The harriers braved 18-degree weather in Iowa. Katy Trotter finished 21st overall, posting a 20:29.4 for 6K. She finished 20th in team scoring and was the third runner on the team. Katy was the top finisher among all freshmen at the NCAAs and earned All-American honors. Amanda was the Cardinals’ No. 5 scorer, clocking 21:12.4. She was 92nd overall and 68th in team scoring. Junior Sara Bei (19:49.1) led the Cardinals with her third place. Another junior, Alicia Craig, was sixth (19:55.00). From there, Stanford’s freshmen took over, led by the Trotters and Arianna Lambie (24th, 20:31.6). Stanford edged two-time defending champion Brigham Young, 120-128, for the championship. It was the second title for the Cardinals; their first championship was 1996. Since that first NCAA title, the Cardinal women finished third or better every year except 2001, when they were fifth. With the Stanford men winning as well in convincing style (24-174 over Wisconsin), it marked the second time that Stanford has swept both the men’s and women’s titles in the same year. They are the only school in NCAA cross country history to sweep the men’s and women’s title twice. The Trotters ran into a couple of scholastic rivals at their first NCAA championships. Erin Donohue, the high school cross country and track state champion who battled the Trotters on the track, was clocking 20:40.2. She is now a junior at the University of North Carolina, which finished eighth (294). Howell’s Lindsay Gallo, who also banged heads with the Trotters on the track, finished 75th (21:05.5) for the University of Michigan, which finished fourth (232). Gallo is a senior. — Tim Morris