November 22, 2003

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA . . . Wartburg College juniors Missy Buttry and Josh Moen won the women’s and men’s Division III Cross Country National Championships on Saturday at Hanover (Ind.) College. It marked the first time in Division III history that both the men’s and women’s winner were from the same school.

Buttry won her second straight cross country National Championship and earned All-American honors for the third straight year. She is the fourth Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (IIAC) runner to earn cross country All-American honors three times. The others were Central’s Cam Ratering (1979-81), Luther’s Johanna Olson (1999-2001) and Wartburg’s Robyn Olson (four times, 1991-94).

Buttry finished the 6,000-meter race in 20:00.2, defeating Wisconsin-Oshkosh’s Liz Woodworth by 1:03.1.

Moen is the first IIAC men’s cross country runner to win a National Championship since Luther’s Gene Takle in 1965. Moen finished the 8,000-meter race in 24:34.3, defeating Widener’s Macharia Yuot by 28.7 seconds. Loras’ College senior and four-time IIAC Champion Marcus Murphy finished third in a time of 25:10.6. Murphy’s teammate Dan Winder finished 28th, giving the IIAC four cross country All-American’s this year.

In the team standings. Wartburg’s men finished fifth with 210 points, its highest team finish ever. Loras’ men finished 15th with 361 points. Wartburg’s women finished 14th with 334 points.

In addition to the runners that ran with their team (Wartburg men and women, Loras men), three individual’s from Iowa Conference schools qualified– Coe’s Jenna Boerboom (205th) and Luther’s Natalie Retrum (49th) and Krista Nelson (163rd).

Complete Championship results - Men/Women

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