NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Yale women's cross country team heads to Highland Park in Attleboro, Mass., for the Ivy League Heptagonal Cross Country Championships on Saturday. The Bulldogs will face their seven Ivy foes in a 6K race starting at 11:00 a.m.
Yale returns four of its top seven runners from last year's edition of Heps, in which the Bulldogs finished second. Princeton is the defending champion.
The top seven finishers at Heps earn first team All-Ivy League. Finishers eight through 14 earn second team All-Ivy League.
Top Finishers So Far This Year
- Senior Hebe Chadwick has been Yale's No. 1 finisher in each of the last three races. That includes a first-place overall finish at the Maribel Sanchez Souther Invitational, where she set a course record (20:53.9). She earned All-East for her ninth-place finish at ECACs. Chadwick was Yale's No. 5 finisher at Heps last year, 30th overall.
- Sophomore Phoebe Benun has been Yale's No. 2 finisher in all four races this season. She earned All-East honors for her 13th place finish at ECACs. She was Yale's No. 3 finisher at Heps last year, 16th overall.
- First-year Anna Prusak has been Yale's No. 3 finisher in each of the last two races.
- First-year Naomi Douglas has been Yale's No. 4 finisher in three races, and she was the Bulldogs' No. 3 finisher at the Maribel Sanchez Souther Invitational.
- Senior Daniella Henderson, Yale's captain, has finished fifth on the team in three of four races, and she was sixth in the other. She was Yale's No. 6 finisher at Heps last year.
- Junior Zoe Martonfi has finished among Yale's top six in all four races this season. She was Yale's No. 11 finisher at Heps last year.
- Junior Sylvie Sanok Dufallo has been No. 6 on the team twice and No. 7 on the team twice. She was Yale's No. 7 finisher at Heps last year.
- Junior Julie Piot cracked Yale's top seven in the season opener, and classmate Muriel Lovshin did so at the Maribel Sanchez Souther Invitational.
Heps History
Yale's second-place finish at Heps last year was the Bulldogs' best finish since 2016 (when they finished second).
As a team Yale has won six Heps Championships (1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 2000, 2001).
Yale's individual Heps Champions include:
- 1986 Kelly Groteke '87
- 1988 Sarah P. Smith '89
- 1998 Ariana Kelly '99
- 2001 Kate O'Neill '03
- 2002 Kate O'Neill '03
- 2006 Lindsay Donaldson '08
- 2018 Andrea Masterson '19
- 2019 Kayley DeLay '21
- 2021 Kayley DeLay '21
USTFCCCA Regional Rankings
The Bulldogs enter the race ranked fifth in the Northeast Region in the USTFCCCA poll. Ivy League teams in the regional rankings include:
Northeast
- No. 5 Harvard
- No. 7 Columbia
- No. 8 Yale
- No. 13 Brown
- No. 15 Cornell
- NR Dartmouth
Mid-Atlantic
- No. 3 Princeton
- No. 5 Penn
USTFCCCA XCRI
Developed in 2025 by the USTFCCCA, the Cross Country Ratings Index (XCRI) rates collegiate cross country athletes from their results this season, adjusting each race for how fast it was. It also ranks teams.
In those rankings, the top Ivy teams are Princeton (32 nationally), Penn (57 nationally), Yale (74 nationally) and Harvard (77 nationally).
NCAA Regionals and NCAA Championships
- Yale will compete at the NCAA Northeast Regionals on Friday, Nov. 13 at Bethpage State Park in Old Bethpage, N.Y. The Bulldogs placed fifth at Regionals last year.
- NCAA Championships selections will be announced by 5:00 p.m. ET Saturday, Nov. 14 on ncaa.com.
- The NCAA Men's and Women's Cross Country Championships provide for a maximum of 32 (five-to-seven-person) teams and 38 individuals per gender.
- Eighteen teams automatically qualify for the championships races by finishing as one of the top two teams at any of the nine regional races.
- The remaining 14 at-large teams are selected by the NCAA Division I Cross Country Subcommittee.
- Thirty-six individuals automatically qualify for the championships races by being one of the top four regional finishers not on an advancing team.
- Two additional individuals are selected at-large by the committee.
