CCU’s Saayman earns All-America status

The singular goal and focus all season for Coastal Carolina cross country standout Letitia Saayman was to earn All-America status.

The second career Big South championship, the NCAA Southeast Regional championship and the record times along the way were all a prelude – albeit a significantly impressive prelude – to what happened Saturday.

Saayman needed a top-40 finish in the NCAA cross country championships at E.P. Tom Sawyer State Park in Louisville, Ky., to earn that All-America status, and she would do even better than that.

The senior from South Africa jumped out to a fast start and kept moving up in the crowded field on the way to an 18th-place finish out of 254 finishers in a 6K time of 20 minutes, 9.8 seconds.

It’s the second-best national finish in program history and broke Saayman’s own 6K program-record time.

“This is definitely the ultimate cherry on top of the cake,” she said by phone afterward. “... I don’t think it has sunk in yet. I think when I wake up tomorrow and start my resting week, I’m going to look back on it and just be like, ‘Wow.’”

Saayman is just the third Coastal Carolina women’s cross country runner to earn All-America status.

“To finish her career as an All-American, that’s a story book ending,” Chanticleers coach Jeff Jacobs said. “This was the goal all along and every race all year long seemed to exceed expectations – at least meet if not exceed. You think, ‘Is that going to keep going and going?’ And it did one final time.

“That was just so sweet to see all the hard work and everything she had done [pay off].”

Jacobs said the key was getting off to a strong start and not getting lost behind the sizable pack of runners. Saayman was around the top 40 runners after the first kilometer and continued to push forward from there.

“She had a great last mile of the race, got all the way up to 21st and then passed three more,” he said.

Said Saayman: “I had no idea if I was in 25th place or what place. When I saw Coach Jacobs and he said 18th, I was like, ‘No way!’ It was a great race. Everything just clicked.”

This story was originally published November 21, 2015 at 7:40 PM with the headline "CCU’s Saayman earns All-America status."