Washington women's cross country squad vaults all the way to #2 in USTFCCCA poll...

NEW ORLEANS--The University of Washington women's cross country team were rewarded for its victory at the Wisconsin adidas Invitational last week by the voters of the USTFCCCA national poll, as they vaulted up from #24 all the way to #2 in the poll that was released Tuesday.

The national top three consists of Florida State, Washington, and previously unranked Vanderbilt, who finished second to the Huskies in Madison.

Washington climbed 22 spots to No. 2 from 24th after winning Wisconsin’s adidas Invitational with 199 points. The Huskies topped 18 ranked teams for the victory which included then-top ten teams Villanova, Stanford, Syracuse, Iowa State, New Mexico, and Providence.

In the men's national poll, Washington State, which skipped going to either the Wisconsin adidas meet or the Pre-Nationals in Terre Haute in favor of staying close to home, dropped two spots to #22 in the current national poll. The Cougars did move up to #3 in the West Regional poll behind Stanford and Portland.

Both the Huskies and Cougars will compete in the Pac-12 Championships at the Wigwam Golf Resort in Litchfield Park, Arizona, just outside of Phoenix on October 29th.

The complete national poll is available here.

Courtesy of gohuskies.com, here are two links--one on junior distance runner Joey Bywater, who was the Huskies' number one runner the past two meets, and one on sophomore Katie Flood (above/photo by Mike Scott), who shared the web site's athlete of the week honors for her seventh place finish at the Wisconsin adidas Invitational in her season debut.

The Bywater feature is available here, while the Flood story is available here.

NOTE: The USTFCCCA, University of Washington, and Washington State University sports information office contributed to this report.