of BYU Men’s Teamranked No. 2 in national polls, will be one of the favorites to win Saturday’s NCAA Cross Country Championships in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
‘Probably four teams,’ says coach Ed Aistone“Stanford, BYU, Oklahoma, Northern Arizona.
“We are a podium team (top 4). I can’t believe if we come in 4th or have a really good day and come in 3rd or have a really great day and come in 2nd. It’s just a matter of having such a great day and coming in first.” — BYU Coach Ed Istone
In the women’s race, BYU finished sixth and the University of Utah finished ninth.
Like the Utah men’s team, the Utah Valley women’s team also qualified for the championship.
The women’s 6000m race starts at 9:20am MST. The men’s race continues at 10:10. Temperatures in Stillwater are expected to hit highs of 20°C and lows of 30°C in the morning.
The top team has rested some of its top runners, so it’s difficult to evaluate the teams based on their results from regional championships and some of the big regular season competitions.BYU’s men’s and women’s teams did just that Last week’s regional competition rested them for the national championship. They still finished 2nd and 6th respectively.
7 Entries at BYU — All of them are products of Utah High School — expected to be a three-time All-American Casey Klinger, a junior at the American Folk High, and finished eighth at last year’s NCAA Championship. Springville senior Brandon Garnica. Transfers Copper Hills High School senior Christian Allen, who previously finished 14th and 16th in the competition in Weber State. Joey Noakes, a sophomore at Riverton. His sophomore year Creed and Davin Thompson, identical twins at Skyridge High School. Aidan Troutner, a sophomore at Timpview High.
“We are a podium team (top four),” says Eyestone. “If we have a really good day and come third, or if we have a really great day and come second, or if we have an incredible day and come first. It’s a problem.”
The BYU women’s team is led by Wyoming senior and two-time All-American Aubrey Frensway, who finished 15th in the 2020 NCAA competition, and Boise sophomore Lexi Halladay.
Utah Valley’s Everlyn Kemboi is a senior from Kenya who won the NCAA West Regional Individual Championship.
BYU is one of the country’s strongest cross-country programs. Cougars is one of four schools ranked in the top 10 in both boys’ and girls’ rankings. The BYU men won his NCAA championship in 2019, and the women won that one year after him, sandwiched between runners-up. Men’s has been in the top 7 of the NCAA Championship nine times in his 11 years.
BYU is 3 individual wins The last two NCAA competitions have been won by Connor Muntz in 2020 and 2021 and Whitney Orton in 2021. This gave the men’s program his four individual championships, won by Icestone in 1984 and Josh Rohattinski in 2006. .
The University of Utah women’s team has been in the top 20 of the NCAA competition three times in the past six years, with a program best finish of 16th in 2019. The University of Utah is poised to improve its results based on her second-place finish in both competitions. Pac-12 Championship and NCAA Mountain Regional. The team is led by Kansas native Emily Venters, runner-up in her Pac-12 competition, and Simone Prude, who transferred to her BYU from Canada.
The top two teams from each of the nine NCAA Regional Championships will automatically qualify for the competition, with an additional 13 teams invited to the general public. BYU and Utah Valley were given general slots in the women’s field, and Utah State University was given general slots in the men’s race.
The first four individual finishers who are not members of the qualifying teams will also be invited to the competition. Utah State’s Annaleigh Weaver and Mikaela Rivera, who were 16th and her 22nd in the Women’s NCAA Mountain Regional, earned general slots in the NCAA competition.
NCAA Cross-Country Rankings
male
1 — Stamford
2—BYU
3 — Northern Arizona
4 — Oklahoma
5 — Air Force
6 — Tulsa
7 — Wake Forest
8 — Wisconsin
9 — Colorado
10 — Syracuse
Woman
1 — North Carolina cent.
2 — New Mexico
3 — Oklahoma
4 — Northern Arizona
5 — Notre Dame
6—BYU
7 — Alabama
8 — Colorado
9 — Utah
10 — Oregon
