Morgantown senior Irene Riggs continues to make quite a splash as a long distance runner on a national scale.
Riggs raced by the field Saturday at the Nike Cross Nationals at Glendoveer Golf Course in Portland, finishing a challenging course in 16:40 for a comfortable victory in a field of 195 runners.
Saturday’s finish time allowed for Riggs to win by nearly 14 full seconds.
Irene Riggs proved she’s the class of the 2022 high school XC season.
Full #NXN race replay ➡️ https://t.co/0PQDrv41hg pic.twitter.com/UusOkqwYQy
— RunnerSpace (@runnerspace) December 3, 2022
Riggs was coming off a dominant showing at the Nike Southeast Regionals in Cary, North Carolina, where she shattered the course record and recorded the second-fastest time for a high school girl in a 5K at 16:02. That mark beat the previous course record by more than 20 seconds.
Riggs is bound for Stanford upon graduating from Morgantown in 2023. She led the Mohigans to their fourth straight Class AAA cross country championship in October when she easily broke the 5K course record in Ona with a finish time of 16:32.