FRESNO, Calif.- After her historic performance at the DII West Regional Championships, junior Julissa Avila historic season continues as she officially earns a spot in the NCAA DII National Championships. 

"It's truly an historic accomplishment for Julissa to qualify for Nationals, making her the first distance female to do so in the NCAA era for the Sunbirds," remarked head coach Ray Winter.

This past weekend in Billings, Montana, Avila finished in 14th, running a lifetime best of 21 minutes and 28 seconds, the highest place finish of any female student athlete in school history at the West Regionals. 

Avila now continues to etch her name in the history books as the first female Fresno Pacific Cross Country runner to ever qualify for the DII National Championships. 

 "It also goes to show just how hard it is to qualify as an individual because we have had some very talented women come through this program and none were quite able to do it until now," remarked Winter.  "Cross country is a team oriented sport and there are only 26 individuals in the nation that earned the privilege of running at Nationals, she is in some very elite company as one of those individuals."

The DII National Championships will take place Saturday, November 23 at Arcade Creek Cross Country Course in Sacramento, California.  The women's race will begin at 11:15pm PT. 

"Her rise and talent has not been an accident, she's consistent, hard-working, and humble; those are the ingredients to greatness," concluded Winter. 

A live web stream of the championships will occur on www.NCAA.com from 10am PT until the conclusion of the awards ceremony.  

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