Week in Review: National titles up next?
New Mexico women, Northern Arizona men hope Mountain Regional victories foreshadow wins in NCAA Championships
Forecasting the outcome of the NCAA Cross Country Championships is never an easy proposition. There are just so many variables when trying to predict how things will turn out in a 6-kilometer women’s race or a 10-kilometer men’s event.
However, there is no question that the women’s team from the University of New Mexico and the men’s squad from Northern Arizona will enter the national title meet in Stillwater, Oklahoma on Saturday on a roll after winning their respective races against particularly strong fields in the Mountain Regional Championships in Albuquerque on Friday.
New Mexico, the No. 2-ranked women’s team in the nation, placed four runners among the top 13 finishers to total 56 points and finish well ahead of then-No. 9-ranked Utah and No. 4-ranked Northern Arizona, who each totaled 103 points. Utah was awarded second place on the basis of the tiebreaker that goes to the team whose top five runners win more head-to-head matchups.
Colorado State, the No. 20-ranked team in the nation, finished fourth with 121 points, followed by No. 8 Colorado with 135 and No. 6 BYU with 144.
“It was a great crowd, there were lots of people here, and the women ran well,” said New Mexico coach Joe Franklin. “We had some really good things happen, and everything went great. The women are in a really good place right now.”
Northern Arizona, winners of five of the last six NCAA men’s championships, received a 1-2 finish from sophomore Nico Young and junior Drew Bosley – who came across the finish line together – on the way to a winning 43-point total.
The then-No. 3-ranked Lumberjacks were followed by No. 2 BYU with 54 points, No. 9 Colorado with 97, No. 5 Air Force with 104, and No. 21 Montana State with 123.
Nine regional meets were held across the country last Friday to determine the 31 men’s and women’s teams, as well as the top individual competitors not on a qualifying team that will toe the starting line for NCAA Championships that will be held at the Greiner Family OSU Cross Country Course on Saturday.
The women’s race will start at 10:20 a.m., Eastern Time, followed by the men’s event at 11:10 a.m.
Senior Everlyn Kemboi of Utah Valley won the women’s race in the Mountain Regional with a time of 19 minutes 47.6 seconds over the 6,000-meter course at the University of New Mexico’s North Golf Course.
She was followed by sophomore Elise Stearns of Northern Arizona at 19:55.7, and the BYU duo of senior Aubrey Frentheway and junior Lexy Halladay-Lowry, who each ran 20:04.9.
The start of the New Mexico contingent came next as junior Gracelyn Larkin placed fifth in 20:05.9. Not far behind her were sophomore teammates Amelia Mazzie-Downie and Emma Heckel, who finished eighth and ninth in 20:11.9 and 20:13.5, respectively.
Sophomore Aliandrea Upshaw finished 13th in 20:27.1 for the Lobos, with senior Abbe Goldstein rounding out the team’s five scoring runners with a 21st-place finish in 20:38.9.
“Our region is very strong, and winning it feels really good,” said Heckel. “It shows that we are ready [for nationals].”
New Mexico will race defending champion and top-ranked North Carolina State for the third time this season in the NCAA meet. Previously, the Lobos finished second to NC State in the Joe Piane Notre Dame Invitational by a 55-68 score on Sept. 30, and they tied the Wolfpack for first place, 80-80, in the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational on Oct. 14, before finishing second on the tiebreaker.
The Northern Arizona men finished a well-beaten third to Stanford and BYU in the Nuttycombe Invitational. But they appear to be coming around at the right time as they had five of the top 17 finishers in the Mountain Regional.
In addition to Young and Bosley, who ran 28:01.8 and 28:01.9 over the 10,000-meter course, senior Ryan Raff placed ninth in 28:09.7, junior Brody Hasty finished 14th in 28:17.8, and sophomore Santiago Prosser was 17th in 28:18.2 for the Lumberjacks.
Northern Arizona also received a 27th-place effort (28:33.9) from Colin Sahlman, the highly-touted freshman from Newbury Park High School in California who was selected by Track & Field News as its boys’ athlete of the year for the 2022 season.
"We always have a tough challenge in this region," said Northern Arizona coach Mike Smith. "We performed in confident fashion, under control, and we really had a race that showed we're ready to compete at the top of the NCAA.”
Dominant performance: Defending NCAA women’s champion North Carolina State, paced by a 1-2-3 finish from sophomore Katelyn Tuohy and juniors Kelsey Chmiel and Samantha Bush, rolled to a 25-76 victory over second-place – and 15th-ranked – North Carolina in the Southeast Regional at E.P. “Tom” Sawyer State Park in Louisville, Kentucky.
Virginia, the No. 12-ranked team in the nation, finished third with 109 points, followed by Furman with 133.
It was the sixth consecutive regional title for top-ranked NC State, which won the Joe Piane and Nuttycombe invitationals earlier this season, as well as the Atlantic Coast Conference Championships on Oct. 28.
Tuohy, the NCAA individual title favorite, clocked 19:49.1 over the 6,000-meter course, with Chmiel at 19:58.6 and Bush at 20:08.0. Sydney Seymour finished seventh in 20:12.5 for NC State, with fellow senior Nevada Mareno placing 12th in 20:25.6 for the Wolfpack.
North Carolina, the No. 12-ranked team in the nation, won the men’s title with a 61-83 victory over runner-up – and 19th-ranked – Virginia. Wake Forest, ranked seventh, finished third with 88 points, followed by No. 15 North Carolina State with 96.
Parker Wolfe paced North Carolina with a second-place clocking of 29:44.6 over the 10,000-meter course, with fellow sophomore Patrick Anderson finishing sixth in 29:59.1 for the Tar Heels. Junior Nickolas Scudder of Charlotte won the race in 29:42.8.
Cardinal power: Stanford won the men’s and women’s titles in the West Regional at Chambers Bay Golf Course in University Place, Washington.
The top-ranked men’s team had four of the top eight finishers in posting a 45-92 victory over second-place Gonzaga.
Individual winner Brian Fay paced No. 14 Washington to a third-place finish with 105 points, followed by No. 18 Oregon with 141 and No. 25 Cal Baptist with 145.
While senior Fay timed 28:17.2 over the 10,000-meter course, Stanford received third-, fifth- and sixth-place finishes from sophomores Charles Hicks (28:22.6) and Ky Robinson (28:26.3), and senior Meika Beaudoin-Rousseau (28:26.4).
The Cardinal ran without sophomore Cole Sprout, who had been its No. 3 runner in the Nuttycombe Invitational and its No. 2 scorer in the Pacific-12 Conference meet.
Stanford won the women’s team title with a 76-96 victory over second-place – and No. 10-ranked – Oregon. Washington, ranked 16th, finished third with 114 points, followed by Oregon State and No. 14 Cal Baptist, who each totaled 150 points before OSU was awarded fourth place on the tiebreaker.
Junior Kaylee Mitchell of Oregon State won the individual title with a time of 19:19.2 over the 6,000-meter course. Sophomore Zofia Dudek paced No. 11-ranked Stanford with a third-place time of 19:25.1.
The Cardinal had an impressive gap of 22 seconds between Dudek and its No. 5 runner, freshman Riley Stewart, who finished 21st in 19:47.2.
Tight grouping keys victories: The Notre Dame women and the Wisconsin men employed superb depth in winning their respective team titles in the Great Lakes Regional at the LaVern Gibson Championship Course at Wabash Valley Family Sports Center in Terra Haute, Indiana.
Notre Dame, which had finished four points behind top-ranked North Carolina State in the ACC Championships, had five of the top 12 finishers while posting a 34-111 victory over second-place – and No. 25-ranked – Ohio State.
Michigan, which was ranked 21st, finished third with 116 points, followed by No. 19 Michigan State with 124, No. 22 Wisconsin with 129, and No. 17 Toledo with 131.
Junior Olivia Markezich of Notre Dame won the women’s individual title with a time of 19:54.1 over the 6,000-meter course and the Fighting Irish also received a fourth-place finish from sophomore Siona Chisholm (20:07.0) and a sixth-place effort from graduate student Maddy Denner (20:13.4) during a race in which the gap between its No.1 and 5 runners was 23 seconds.
Big Ten Conference champion Wisconsin won the men’s team title with a 50-61 victory over No. 13-ranked Notre Dame. Michigan finished third with 79 points, followed by Butler with 82 and Michigan State with 137.
Wisconsin did not have a runner among the top seven finishers in the 10,000-meter race, but working together as a group, the No. 8-ranked Badgers swept the next six places with times that ranged from 30:07.8 for Evan Bishop in eighth place to 30:08.6 for fellow junior Bob Liking in 13th place.
Liking won the Big Ten Conference title and also finished fourth in the Nuttycombe Invitational.
Grad student Barry Keane and sophomore Jesse Hamlin paced Butler’s fourth-place finish in the men’s team standings by placing first and second with times of 29:38.3 and 29:51.2.
Narrowest of victories: Tulsa, powered by a 3-4-5-6 finish by its top four runners, won the men’s title via the tiebreaker in the Midwest Regional at Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia, Missouri.
Tulsa, the No. 6-ranked team in the nation, totaled 49 points, as did No. 4 Oklahoma State. Iowa State finished third with 73 points, followed by Loyola of Chicago with 156.
Senior Isai Rodriguez of Oklahoma State won a very tight men’s race as his 29:40.1 clocking over the 10,000-meter course was less than nine seconds ahead of the 11th-place finisher.
Sophomore Shane McEvoy of Tulsa placed third in 29:42.0, followed by senior teammates Cormac Dalton (29:42.1), Isaac Akers (29:42.2), and Michael Power (29:42.8).
In the women’s meet, No. 3-ranked Oklahoma State was a comfortable winner as it totaled 58 points to the 88 of second-place Northwestern. Bradley finished third with 99 points, followed by Iowa State with 115.
Freshman Natalie Cook and junior Taylor Roe paced Oklahoma State with identical times of 20:11.9 over the 6,000-meter course to finish second and third.
Junior Olivia Howell of Illinois placed first in 20:02.9 after finishing 23rd in the Big Ten Championships on Oct. 28.
Showdown is near: The Alabama women and the Tennessee men posted runaway victories in the team competition in the South Regional at John Hunt Park in Huntsville, Alabama. But the most watched runner in the meet was sophomore Parker Valby of Florida, who posted her third victory of the season without a defeat.
The runner-up in the women’s 5,000 meters in the NCAA Track and Field Championships in June, Valby broke away from the lead pack shortly after the first mile and crossed the finish line with a 19:17.2 clocking over the 6,000-meter course. She is regarded by many as the runner with the best chance of challenging Katelyn Tuohy of North Carolina State for the individual title in the NCAA Championships.
Alabama, the No. 7-ranked team in the nation, swept the next four places after Valby on its way to a 34-88 victory over No. 24 Florida State. Mississippi finished third with 124 points, followed by Lipscomb with 131.
Junior Amaris Tyynismaa, freshman Hilda Olemomoi, and senior Mercy Chelangat were nearly inseparable at the finish line as they clocked 19:35.1, 19:35.3, and 19:35.6, respectively.
Chelangat is expected to be amongst the leaders in the NCAA meet as she finished second in the national title meet last November and won the 2020 title in Stillwater in March of last year after the meet had been postponed by four months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tennessee, paced by the second- and third-place finishes of sophomore Yaseen Abdalla and senior Dylan Jacobs, won the men’s team title with 39 points, followed by Mississippi with 69, Alabama with 73, and Florida State with 134.
Sophomore Victor Kiprop of Alabama won the individual title with a time of 29:21.2 over the 10,000-meter course. Abdalla ran 29:28.6, with Jacobs at 29:28.7.
Entry lists: Anyone who is interested in a list of teams and individual runners — not on a qualifying team — scheduled to compete in the NCAA Championships can click here.
And then there were two: Botswana will become the second African country – Kenya was the first – to host a World Athletics gold level meet next year when the Botswana Golden Grand Prix Meet is scheduled to be held at the National Stadium in the country’s capital of Gaborone on April 29.
The event was previously known as the Gaborone International Meet and categorized as a bronze level meet by World Athletics.
Sprinter Letsile Tebogo should be a huge draw for the meet as the 19-year-old Botswanan set a three world under-20 records in the men’s 100 meters last season, with his best of 9.91 seconds coming in a winning effort in the World Athletics U-20 Championships in Cali, Colombia, in August. He also lowered his personal best to 19.96 in the 200 in that meet, but was edged for the gold medal by Blessing Akwasi Afrifah of Israel, who ran the same time as Tebogo.
Looking forward to next year: The dates for the 2023 Diamond League final have been set for Sept. 16-17, when they will be staged during the Prefontaine Classic at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field in Eugene.
It will mark the first time since the Diamond League’s inception in 2010 that its final championship meet will not be staged during either the van Damme Memorial in Brussels or the Weltklasse meet in Zurich.
The Prefontaine Classic, which began in 1975, has traditionally been staged in the spring and was held on May 27 and 28 this year.
Anyone interested in receiving updates about the Prefontaine Classic and the availability of tickets can click here.
Looking forward four years: Birmingham, England has been selected as the host of the 2026 European Athletics Championships.
Birmingham was one of two cities bidding for the championships, but when Budapest, Hungary, withdrew its bid last week, European Athletics awarded the meet to the city that was credited with staging an extremely-well attended Commonwealth Games competition in August.
“The British public has a huge appreciation for world class athletics and the British crowds are among the most knowledgeable, passionate and enthusiastic anywhere in the world,” said European Athletics President Dobromir Karamarinov. “We saw this recently at the Commonwealth Games where the stands were at full capacity, even for the morning sessions. We are sure that Europe’s best athletes will be competing in a full stadium every day and in front of a huge television audience not just in Europe but globally as well. We really couldn’t ask for a better host city and venue for our showcase event in 2026.”
Although London hosted the Olympic Games in 1908, 1948, and 2012, as well as the World Athletics Championships in 2017, 2026 will mark the first time Great Britain will have hosted the European Athletics Championships, which have been held 25 times since their inception in 1934.
The meet began as a once-every-four years competition, but it switched to an every-two years format beginning in 2010.
The 2024 meet is scheduled to be held in Rome.
On the performance enhancing drug front: Keneth Kiprop Renju of Kenya has been banned for five years by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) after testing positive for the banned substance Mathasterone earlier this year.
Renju, who turned 26 in July, won a 10-kilometer road race in 26:57 in Lille, France on March 20, a half marathon in 59:38 in Prague, Czech Republic on April 2, and a half marathon in 60:13 in Lisbon, Portugal on May 8. But the urine samples he provided after each of those victories later tested positive for Mathasterone, a steroid that has been shown to improve one’s levels of energy and endurance.
The AIU initially planned to ban Renju for six years, but that punishment was reduced to five years after the AIU stated in a Nov. 11 press release that Renju returned a signed Admission of Anti-Doping Rule Violations and Acceptance of Consequences Form on Oct. 26 in which “he admitted the Anti-Doping Rule Violations and accepted the asserted period of ineligibility.”
The five-year ban retroactively began on May 13 and nullified all of Renju’s performances starting on March 20 of this year.
In memory: George Young, the bronze medalist in the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase in the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City and a member of four U.S. Olympic teams, passed away on Nov. 8 in Casa Grande, Arizona. He was 85.
Young was ranked among the top 10 steeplechasers in the world by Track & Field News for the 1961 (9th), ’62 (7th), ’64 (6th), and ’68 (4th) seasons.
In addition to his third-place finish in the steeplechase in the 1968 Olympics, the versatile Young placed 16th in the marathon that year. He also finished fifth in the steeplechase in the 1964 Games in Tokyo and set world indoor records in the two mile (8 minutes 27.2 seconds) and three mile (13:09.8) in 1969.
Although many track and field experts felt Young would have won the steeplechase in the 1968 Olympics had they been held at a low-altitude site, rather than in Mexico City where the elevation of 7,350 feet (2,240 meters) was advantageous to runners from Kenya and Ethiopia who were born and raised at high altitudes, Young said in a 2012 interview that he did not dwell on what might have been.
“I ran about as well as I could have,” he said about the race in which he was outkicked by Kenyans Amos Biwott and Ben Kogo. “I can’t look back and feel bad about it as you have to accept the results for what they are and not worry about it.”
In memory II: Michael Mollenbeck, the bronze medalist in the men’s discus in the World Athletics Championships in 2001 and ’05, passed away on Nov. 2. He was 52.
German Mollenbeck was ranked among the top 10 discus throwers in the world six times by Track & Field News, topped by a No. 4 ranking in 2002 and No. 5 rankings in 2001 and ’03.
In addition to his third-place finishes in the 2001 and ’05 World Championships, Mollenbeck placed fifth in the 2003 meet and sixth in the 1999 event.
Mollenbeck was also a three-time Olympian whose best finish was a 10th-place effort in the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia.
