Lobo XC to Face Stacked Field at Wisconsin Pre-Nationals on Saturday

New Mexico Men’s and Women’s Cross Country head to Madison, Wisc. this week to get a preview of this year’s NCAA Championship Course against even more nationally-ranked competition at Wisconsin Pre-Nationals on Saturday.

After a strong showing at the Cowboy Jamboree that saw the women knock off No. 16 Oklahoma State and the men beat No. 22 Oregon and No. 24 Texas while finishing second behind No. 1 Oklahoma State, both squads will get a significant step up in competition at Zimmer Championship Course. Saturday’s “A” races feature 20 women’s teams and 19 men’s teams ranked in the Top 30 in the most recent USTFCCCA National Polls — including all of the Top Five women’s squads and eight of the Top 10 men’s programs — with 10 women’s teams and five men’s teams that received votes last week in the mix as well.

Saturday will also be the final regular-season racing of the fall for UNM, with Mountain West Championships (Colorado Springs, Colo.) up next on Nov. 1 ahead of NCAA Mountain Regionals (Reno, Nev.) on Nov. 15.

The Lobo men will be looking to get a better picture of where they stand among the Top 10 nationally this week after passing their first test in Stillwater last month. Habtom Samuel will be in the hunt for his first individual win of the fall after finishing as runner-up at the Cowboy Jamboree — he won an NCAA title in the outdoor 10,000m in June and has racked up four more MW titles and four more All-American trophies since the conclusion of the 2023 XC Season.

The UNM women had their unprecedented streak of 14 consecutive Mountain West titles snapped with a fourth-place finish at conference championships and narrowly missed out on a team qualification to nationals in 2023, but they’re climbing in the polls and could pick up momentum with another big showing.
Pamela Kosgei put the nation on notice with a blistering runaway win (19:50.0) in Stillwater that won her MW Athlete/Freshman of the Week honors — she’ll be racing against even better competition this time around.

Even with a women’s program that won two NCAA Championships and finished among the Top 10 in the nation 13 years in a row under former coach Joe Franklin, the Lobos have only sent both men’s and women’s squads to NCAA Championships in the same season six times in their history (2009-2014). This time around, they’re racing in Madison in hopes both will be back again in November.

“That’s our goal – We want to be top 14 for both the men’s and women’s programs every single year,” Gauson told CITIUSMAG earlier in the season. “On my whiteboard, we’ve got the weeks written down – We’re just excited for every week to come along.”

FOLLOW THE ACTION
Saturday’s action kicks off with the women’s collegiate 6K at 9 a.m. MT, with the men’s 8K race at 9:40 a.m. The event will be streamed via RunnerSpace+, with live results available via GoLobos.com/XCResults. Follow @UNMLoboXCTF on IG and X for raceday updates, behind-the-scenes content and more.

WISCONSIN PRE-NATIONALS
Oct. 19 | Madison, Wisc. | Zimmer Championship Course
9 a.m. Women’s 6K / 9:40 a.m. Men’s 8K

THIS WEEKEND’S FIELD
Saturday’s racing will feature 20 women’s teams and 19 men’s teams ranked among the Top 30 in the nation in the most recent USTFCCCA Coaches’ Poll — UNM is one of just eight programs competing with both the men’s and women’s squads ranked nationally.

RANKINGS UPDATE
The UNM men remained at No. 8 – their highest preseason rank in history and highest weekly rank since the final poll of the 2010 season – with the women moving up four spots to No. 17 in the nation in last week’s USTFCCCA Coaches’ Poll.

The reigning Mountain West champions, the UNM men entered the rankings for the first time since 2015 last season, rising as high as No. 13 in the final poll before placing 18th as a team at NCAA Cross Country Championships behind a runner-up individual finish from Mountain Region Athlete of the Year Habtom Samuel.

2024 marks the 11th consecutive season in which the Lobo women are ranked in the preseason poll, not counting the 2020 season in which there was no preseason ranking — they opened the 2023 season at No. 21 and were ranked no lower than fourth in the nation in each of the previous seven preseason polls, winning national team titles in 2015 and 2017 along the way.

In the USTFCCCA Regional Rankings released on Monday, the UNM men remain No. 3 in the Mountain Region, with the women ranked No. 4. They finished third and seventh at Mountain Regionals in 2023, respectively.

UNM MEN’S CROSS COUNTRY – WEEK 3 USTFCCCA RANKINGS
National Rank: No. 8
Mountain Region Rank: No. 2

UNM MEN’S CROSS COUNTRY – WEEK 3 USTFCCCA RANKINGS
National Rank: No. 17
Mountain Region Rank: No. 4

LAST TIME OUT (OSU COWBOY JAMBOREE, 9/28)
In its first full-length race of the season with all of its top runners in action, New Mexico Cross Country passed its first big test of the season with flying colors at the OSU Cowboy Jamboree on Sept. 28, with Pamela Kosgei running away with a dominant individual win in her collegiate debut to lead the No. 21 Lobo women to first place in the team score and Habtom Samuel finishing as runner-up to lead a second-place showing for the No. 8 men.

Both teams backed up their lofty preseason rankings with competitive peformances against some nationally-ranked competition — the UNM women (34 points) beat out No. 16 OSU (4o points) on their home course, and the UNM men (45 points) put a healthy distance between their top five and third- and fourth-place finishers No. 22 Oregon (89 points) and No. 24 Texas (116 points).

Kosgei’s winning time of 19:50.0 was 43.5 seconds faster than the next finisher as she led a Lobo Top 7 that all packed into the overall Top 20, the 10th-fastest 6K time ever ran by a woman on OSU’s Greiner Cross Country Course and fastest there since NCAA Championships in 2022. Kosgei was followed by Natalie Bitetti (4th, 20:48.3), Klara Dess (6th, 20:56.8), and Mercy Kirarei (8th, 21:03.3) in the Top 10, with Hanna Bruckmayer (15th, 21:26.9) rounding out the 1:44:06 spread and Tilly Simpson (17th, 21:30.0) and Sophia McDonnell (18th, 21:31.1) finishing behind them to make it seven in the Top 20.

The Lobo men finished second in the 8K race with 45 points to beat No. 22 Oregon and No. 24 Texas in the team score, with No. 1 Oklahoma State winning with a 19-point total. In his first collegiate race since winning his first NCAA title in the 10,000m and finishing fifth in the 5,000m Final at NCAA Outdoor Championships in June, Habtom Samuel led the charge with an individual runner-up finish (23:03.6) — both he and overall champion Bryan Musau of Oklahoma State (22:55.6) finished under the previous Cowboy Jamboree record of 23:05.8 set by OSU’s Isai Rodriguez in 2021.

Lobos packed five runners into the Top 15, with Vincent Chirchir (9th, 23:54.3), Collins Kiprotich (10th, 23:58.0), Evans Kiplagat (11th, 24:09.7), and Rikus Van Niekerk (13th, 24:11.6) helping solidify the runner-up spot behind No. 1 Oklahoma State ahead of Corne De Fouw (34th, 24:51.9) and Thomas Termote (40th, 25:09.5).

One of the most highly-touted international recruits to come to UNM in recent memory, the Kenyan national solidified her place in the national conversation in her first cross country race as a Lobo with a runaway victory to lead UNM to a women’s team title at the OSU Cowboy Jamboree. Her winning time of 19:50.0 was 43.5 seconds faster than the next finisher as she led a Lobo Top 7 that all packed into the overall Top 20 to beat out No. 16 Oklahoma State in the team score with 34 points to the Cowgirls’ 40. The UNM women moved up four spots to No. 17 in the USTFCCCA National Coaches’ Poll the following week as a result.

Kosgei took the lead just over a kilometer into the race and didn’t relinquish it the rest of the way, posting 3:17.5 and 3:13.8 splits over her final two kilometers — her time was the 10th-fastest 6K time ever ran by a woman on OSU’s Greiner Cross Country Course and fastest there since NCAA Championships in 2022.

THE STAGE IS SET
In the early 2000’s with a significant donation from Badger alum Thomas Zimmer, the University of Wisconsin built a permanent standalone cross country course consisting of rolling hills and switchbacks – to help spectators enjoy the competition – paired with lush, green grass suitable for fast times. Over a decade later, the course has become known for the prestigious Nuttycombe Invitational in mid-October — but this year, since the Wisconsin course will also be the NCAA Championship course, Nuttycombe was moved to earlier in the fall with this weekend slotted for Pre-Nationals.
Annually, at least half of the USTFCCCA ranked teams attend Nuttycombe in mid-October – in large part, the meet has become almost necessary to secure NCAA at-large qualifying points. In 2021, there were 19 ranked women’s teams out of the 36 teams in attendance with 18 of the 34 men’s teams nationally ranked. In each season that it was held, no less than 10 of the teams selected to the NCAA Championship competed at the Nuttycombe earlier in the year.
The UNM women have won Nuttycombe four times, first in 2015 and 2017 – years the Lobos went on to win an NCAA Championship – as well as 2021 and 2022, when they went on to finish third and second, respectively.

LAST TIME AT ZIMMER CHAMPIONSHIP COURSE
Habtom Samuel finished third overall to pace a 14th-place finish for the UNM men while the Lobo women finished 25th in the team total behind a Top-25 finish from Nicola Jansen at last year’s Nuttycombe Invitational on Oct. 13, 2023 — UNM’s 14th-place finish in the 8K “A” race was the best finish at Nuttycombe for the Lobo men since 2014, when they finished 12th.
After receiving votes in that week’s USTFCCCA National Coaches’ Poll, the Lobo men beat 10 teams ranked in the Top 30 nationally and four in the Top 15 in Friday’s team score as well as five other teams that were receiving votes this week — they’ve been ranked among the Top 25 nationally in every USTFCCCA poll that’s been released since.
Samuel hung with eventual champ Graham Blanks of Harvard (23:23.4) and second-place finisher Nico Young of Northern Arizona (23:26.1) the whole way, never dipping lower than seventh place and holding the No. 3 spot from the 6K mark till the finish.  Evans Kiplagat (18th, 23:45.5) and Lukas Kiprop (45th, 24:06.1) both rounded out the Lobos’ Top Three – UNM was one of only six teams in the Men’s 8K to place three runners in the Top 50. They were followed by Samuel Field (156th, 24:43.9) and Thomas Termote (215th, 25:08.6) to round out the point-scoring.
In the women’s 6K, Nicola Jansen placed 21st with a 20:18.8 finish and Klara Dess made it two Lobos in the top 100 with an 86th-place finish (20:56.6). They were followed by Semira Mebrahtu Firezghi (145th, 21:30.8), Sarah Eckel (149th, 21:33.0), Christina Nisoli (186th, 21:54.5), Tyler Schwartz (189th, 21:57.4) and Stefana Purkovic (244th, 23:05.0). The Lobo women’s Top 5 collectively picked up 50 places over the final 2,000 meters to move up to No. 25 from No. 27, with Firezghi and Eckel moving up 65 places each over the final 4,000m.

LOBOS SWEEP NO. 1 SPOTS IN MOUNTAIN WEST PRESEASON POLLS
New Mexico Men’s and Women’s Cross Country were both voted No. 1 in the Mountain West Preseason Coaches’ Poll, the league announced Wednesday – the first time since 2015 that both Lobo squads enter the season as the preseason favorites in the conference.

The men earned seven of nine possible first-place votes to clock in at the top spot with 63 points ahead of second-place Air Force, which finished with two first-place votes and 55 points in total. The Lobo women received nine first-place votes to lead the conference with 97 points, outpacing second-place pick and 2023 champs Colorado State (2 first-place votes, 88 points).

2️⃣ days away from Cross Country season 🤩

New Mexico comes in at the top as the overall preseason favorite! pic.twitter.com/8IxZfDmWsh

— Mountain West (@MountainWest) August 28, 2024

2023-24 SEASON RECAP
In Gauson’s first year at the helm, the UNM men found a level of success they hadn’t enjoyed in nearly a decade, winning a Mountain West title and punching their ticket to NCAA Championships as a team for the first time since 2014 and finishing the season 18th in the nation. Alongside NCAA runner-up and Mountain Region Champion Habtom Samuel, Evans Kiplagat (33rd) also finished as an All-American, with Nicola Jansen (36th) also earning All-American honors as UNM’s lone representative in the women’s race.

All three will be returning to lead a retooled roster that seeks to get both teams to NCAA’s in the same year for the first time since that 2014 season.

“Before I got here, Coach Franklin’s [men’s] team was sixth in the conference and hadn’t made the meet for a number of years,” Gauson told CITIUSMAG last week. “We were able to bring in a few athletes with Thomas Termote, Lukas Kiprop, Evans Kiplagat, and obviously Habtom as a freshman and launched straight into 18th in year one.

“We were hoping for a little bit more,” Gauson said. “I think we were sitting in tenth and then Lukas had a little bit of a knee problem … [he] fell back quite a lot into the hundreds which really killed our team score.”

THE YEAR OF HABTOM
Since the start of the 2023-24 season, Samuel has racked up accomplishments at a pace unseen by any true freshman in UNM history. Last week, he added his first NCAA title and another All-American finish today to a lengthy resume:

• 2023 Mountain West Athlete of the Year (XC)
• NCAA Runner of the Week (XC)
• USTFCCCA Mountain Region Athlete of the Year (XC)
• Mountain West Champion (XC)
• NCAA Mountain Region Champion (XC)
• NCAA Championship Runner-Up (XC)
• Mountain West Championship Record Holder (XC)
• UNM Program Record Holder – 5,000m, 3,000m, Mile (Indoor)
• Fastest collegiate mile ever ran at the Albuquerque Convention Center (3:59.12)
• 11th-Fastest 5,000m time in NCAA History (Indoor)
• Mountain West Championship Performer of the Meet (Indoor)
• Mountain West Championship Record Holder – 5,000m, 3,000m (Indoor)
• Mountain West Champion – 5,000m, 3,000m (Indoor)
• USTFCCCA First Team All-American – 5,000m, 3,000m (Indoor)
• No. 2 10,000m time in NCAA History (Outdoor)
• 2024 Mountain West Indoor Track Athlete of the Year
• 2024 Mountain West Outdoor Track Athlete of the Year
• Mountain West Champion – 1500m, 5,000m (Outdoor)
• NCAA Champion – 10,000m (Outdoor)
• USTFCCCA First Team All-American – 5,000m, 10,000m (Outdoor)
• MW Hal Rothman Sportsmanship Award