Women's Cross Country Picked to Finish Second in MW; Men Picked Sixth

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Ahead of New Mexico’s first season under Head Coach Darren Gauson, the 15-time Mountain West Champion Lobo women’s cross country team was picked to finish second in the league’s 2022 preseason polls.

The Lobos picked up 88 points and three first-place votes in the poll, voted on by the league’s coaches, with Colorado State earning first place with 97 points and seven first-place votes. Meanwhile, the UNM men’s team was picked to finish sixth with 31 points, matching their sixth-place finish in the conference in 2022.

The Lobo women have won 15 straight Mountain West titles, and UNM finished as runners-up at the NCAA XC Championship race last year, extending their streak of top-10 national finishes to 12 consecutive years. For the first time since 2007, UNM enters the fall with a new head coach after the departure of Joe Franklin in the offseason, with a new-look distance coaching staff that includes assistant coaches Brian Maty and Elisabeth Danis.

Prior to being named as the Lobos’ next head coach for cross country and track & field, Gauson spent the last eight years as the head coach of the track and field and cross country programs at Bradley University in Illinois. He led the Braves to 10 Missouri Valley cross country titles — six by the men and four by the women. Prior to arriving in Peoria, Gauson was the cross country coach and assistant track and field coach at Lamar University, where he guided the Cardinals to back-to-back Southland Conference men’s and women’s cross country titles in 2013 and 2014.

Last season, Maty helped coach Bradley to a sweep of Missouri Valley Conference titles in men’s and women’s cross country in 2022, while Danis was the lead assistant for a Gonzaga women’s program that reached its highest national and regional rankings in program history in 2022.

Men’s Poll

Women’s Poll