SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Santa Clara University women's cross country senior
Milaina Almonte won her second consecutive race Saturday, defending her title at the Bronco Invitational and running a school record for the second consecutive year, leading the Broncos to a fourth-place team finish in the 23-team field at Baylands Regional Park.
HOW IT HAPPENED
Almonte lowered her own 6-kilometer school record from a year ago, winning the Bronco Invitational for the second year in a row with a time of 20 minutes, 0.3 seconds. She narrowly missed becoming the first Santa Clara woman to run a sub-20 minute 6 km, but she dominated the entire field, winning by 24.7 seconds. It was an impressive sequel to her 2025 performance, when she ran 20:06.5 with a 27.1-second gap.
Almonte maintained a significant lead throughout the entire race, which presented a mental challenge. "I had to really focus and stay in the race mentally." said Almonte, "it's really hard not to fall back into my head or ease up on the gas, but I just tried to keep my eyes forward and really feed off the energy."
Santa Clara's No. 2 runner Saturday was
Sydney Lim, who placed seventh in 20:42.8. Lim was followed by
Olivia Schlieman, who gave the Broncos three in the top-20 with a 20th-place finish in 21:01.1. Freshman
Sophie Bair (52nd, 21:41.9) and junior
Julia Russo (57th, 21:47.3) followed, finishing only 5.4 seconds apart.
Sarah Guralnick placed 70th in 21:56.9 and
Sigrid Brakenhielm was 83rd with a time of 22:04.3 to round out Santa Clara's top-seven.
Julia Lentz grabbed 95th place in 22:13.1,
Aliyah Yearian finished 103rd in 22:20.4, and
Ramneek Kaur placed 119th in 22:30.0 to cap the Broncos' top-10.
Isabella Cruz (126th, 22:39.2),
Isabella Gonzalez (136th, 22:54.5) and
Grace Winkler (174th, 23:50.2) also ran for Santa Clara.
Emily Fitzgerald ran in Saturday's women's open race, placing 56th in 24:16.8
The Broncos finished fourth as a team, accumulating 122 points and besting all participating West Coast Conference schools except San Francisco (3rd, 95 points). Chico State won the team title with 46 points, followed by Stanislaus State (77 points).
The Broncos next compete in the 2026 WCC Championship, hosted in San Diego, on Oct. 30.
