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Wichita State cross country runner Aliphine Tuliamuk-Bolton finished fourth in the NCAA Championships on Saturday in Louisville, Ky., the best finish in Shocker history.
Her time of 19 minutes, 33.70 seconds in the 6-kilometer race is a WSU record. She earned All-America status for a third time.
Tuliamuk-Bolton, a senior from Kenya, led the race from the 3-kilometer mark to 5 kilometers before falling back over the final 200 meters.
“I wanted to be in the lead pack before the mile mark,” she said in a news release. “But I got caught in the middle of all of the runners, so it took a faster pace to catch up to them. At the end, I was tired and that’s when they pulled away from me.”
Iowa State’s Betsy Saina, a friend and former teammate of Tuliamuk-Bolton, won the race with a time of 19:27.90. Oregon won the women’s team title at Tom Sawyer State Park.
“I thought Aliphine performed incredible,” WSU coach Kirk Hunter said. “It is pretty amazing what she accomplished here.”
Tuliamuk-Bolton finished 12th last season with a time of 19:57.70. She finished 68th as a freshman and 13th as a sophomore, both at Iowa State. She transferred to WSU after her sophomore cross country season and ran in the 2011 NCAA meet for the Shockers.
