KOSGEI NAMED HONDA SPORT AWARD FINALIST
New Mexico’s freshman distance superstar Pamela Kosgei has been named as one of four finalists for the Class of 2025 Honda Sport Award for Cross Country, recognizing the top female athlete in the sport for this season.
Alongside Kosgei, Amy Bunnage from Stanford University, Doris Lemngole from the University of Alabama and Hilda Olemomoi from the University of Florida have been announced as the four finalists for the Class of 2025 Honda Sport Award for Cross Country, as revealed today by Chris Voelz, Executive Director of The Collegiate Women Sports Awards (CWSA).
Kosgei concluded the season as national runner-up at NCAA Championships — the only race which she did not win as an individual in her collegiate debut season. She won all four of her first six collegiate 6K races by an average of 26.95 seconds, winning Mountain West Conference and Mountain Region Individual titles as the top performer for a Lobo Women’s XC squad that finished 7th in the nation when all was said and done In addition to finishing as an All-American, Kosgei earned Mountain West Athlete & Freshman of the Year honors and USTFCCCA Mountain Region Athlete of the Year honors.
The Honda Sport Award has been presented annually by the CWSA for the past 49 years, recognizing the top women athletes in 12 NCAA-sanctioned sports and symbolizing “the best of the best in collegiate athletics.” The recipient of the sport award will become a finalist for the prestigious Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year and the 2025 Honda Cup, which will be presented during the live broadcast of the Collegiate Women Sports Awards Presented by Honda on CBS Sports Network in June.
The finalists were selected based on their standout performances at the 2024 NCAA Cross Country Championship. The Honda Sport Award for Cross Country winner will be announced early next week after voting by administrators from over 1,000 NCAA member schools. Each NCAA member institution has a vote.
Kosgei is the fourth Lobo women’s runner to be named as a finalist for the award along with Courtney Frerichs (2015), Ednah Kurgat (2017) and Weini Kelati (2018, 2019). Kurgat was voted as the overall winner in 2017, with Kelati winning the award in 2019 after finishing second in voting in 2018.
NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS RECAP
Pamela Kosgei and Habtom Samuel both finished as individual runners-up — with Samuel doing so despite losing a shoe halfway through the race — as both New Mexico Men’s and Women’s Cross Country finished in the Top 10 at NCAA Championships in the same year for the first time in program history with ninth- and seventh-place finishes in the team score.
It’s the lowest combined placing between the two teams at NCAA Championships in program history, outpacing 2014 when the men finished 14th and the women finished third. Among 11 programs that qualified both men’s and women’s squads for nationals, UNM is one of just three that placed both teams in the Top 10 alongside BYU and Northern Arizona.
Five Lobos – three men and two women – secured Top-40 individual finishes for All-American honors, with Samuel and Kosgei joined by Mercy Kirarei (35th, 20:01.3) on the women’s side and Collins Kiprotich (35th, 29:22.6) and Evans Kiplagat (40th, 29:25.0) on the men’s side. It’s the second All-American cross country honors of Samuel and Kiplagat’s careers and the first time in program history with multiple UNM men and women finishing as All-Americans.
Kosgei finished second for the first time this season after succumbing to a closing surge from Alabama’s Doris Lemngole down the stretch, clocking a 19:27.8 time to anchor the Lobos’ 14th Top-10 finish in their last 14 NCAA Championship appearances. The true freshman went down to the wire with Florida’s Hilda Oleimomoi, with the two shoulder-to-shoulder until Kosgei pulled away with 100 meters to go to secure second place.
Behind her, Mercy Kirarei picked off four runners over the final 1,000 meters to finish 35th (20:01.3) — a 27-point score — and earn the first All-American honors of her collegiate career, while Klara Dess moved up five in the same span to finish 74th and add 56 points (20:25.5). Tilly Simpson ran a collegiate PR (20:39.8) to place 118th (90 points) and Tina Nisoli crossed in 20:44.0 to place 132nd and button up the scoring.
UNM finished with 244 points in the women’s team score, outpacing four teams ranked above them heading into this week – No. 5 Notre Dame, No. 6 Washington, No. 7 Alabama and No. 9 Georgetown.
Samuel finished as runner-up to Graham Blanks of Harvard for the second year in a row, but did so this time in much more dramatic fashion. The sophomore took a fall and lost a shoe halfway through the race and simply refused to quit in a remarkable display of grit, running the last five kilometers regardless while moving up from 11th at the 6K mark. As he crossed the finish line, he pumped his fist in the air before pointing to his bare (and bloodied) left foot. Even then, he was only 1.7 seconds behind Blanks — who he beat by seven seconds at the same course at Pre-Nationals earlier this season.
“I thought ‘If I stop, the guys were running so fast… the gap would be more,’” Samuel said post-race. “So I said ‘Let me keep running barefoot’ — I did, and I’m so happy.”
Behind Samuel, Collins Kiprotich held steady around the front the whole way to run a new 10K personal best (29:22.6) and garner All-American status in his first NCAA Championships with a 35th-place (32 points) finish, with Evans Kiplagat finishing 40th (29:25.0) to join Samuel as a repeat All-American. Samuel and Kiplagat are only the third and fourth men from New Mexico to even earn All-American honors in cross country twice — they’re the first to do it back-to-back in their first two seasons of competition.
Rikus van Niekerk nearly matched the personal best he set last week at Mountain Regionals (29:54.0) with a 29:54.5 time to finish 98th (82 points) and Vincent Chirchir closed the scoring in 148th (30:13.5).
The UNM men finished with 272 points to place ninth in the nation, breaking a program record for lowest men’s point total that has stood since 1966 (311 points). In their first team appearance since 2014 last season, they finished 18th with 465 points — this year, they shaved 193 points off of that.
HISTORICAL NOTES
– Samuel – who is now up to six All-American trophies in the last 12 months – is only the fourth man from New Mexico to finish as an XC All-American multiple times and the first since Abdirizak Ibrahim (2020, 2021).
– The Lobo men’s 272-point total stands as their lowest at NCAA Championships in program history.
– The women’s seventh-place finish is their 14th Top-10 team finish in as many NCAA Championship appearances – they’ve qualified for 16 of the last 17 NCAA Championships held, with 2023 being the only National championship they failed to qualify for as a team in that span.
– UNM has now had at least one woman finish as an All-American at NCAA’s 13 times in a row. Nicola Jansen did so as an individual qualifier in 2023 to keep the streak alive even when the Lobo women missed out on a team qualification.
TEAM SCORES (TOP 10 ONLY)
| WOMEN’S 6K TEAM SCORE |
MEN’S 10K TEAM SCORE |
| Team |
Points |
Team |
Points |
| No. 1 BYU |
147 |
No. 1 BYU |
124 |
| No. 4 West Virginia |
164 |
No. 4 Iowa State |
137 |
| No. 11 Providence |
183 |
No. 3 Arkansas |
202 |
| No. 3 N. Arizona |
206 |
No. 7 Wisconsin |
212 |
| No. 2 Oregon |
210 |
No. 6 N. Arizona |
237 |
| No. 8 Stanford |
213 |
No. 10 North Carolina |
246 |
| No. 10 New Mexico |
244 |
No. 14 Wake Forest |
256 |
| No. 13 NC State |
251 |
No. 2 Oklahoma State |
256 |
| No. 9 Georgetown |
263 |
No. 6 New Mexico |
272 |
| No. 7 Alabama |
293 |
No. 13 Notre Dame |
337 |
RANKINGS UPDATE
• In the final regular-season polls leading up to NCAA Championships the UNM men matched their highest ranking in program history after moving up to No. 5 and the women remained at No. 10 in the USTFCCCA’s final polls released on Monday — the third consecutive week with both teams ranked among the Top 10. The women outperformed their ranking with a seventh-place finish at nationals, with the men finishing ninth in the team score.
• It’s only the second time in program history that the UNM men have cracked the Top Five, when both UNM men’s and women’s squads came in at No. 5 in the final poll of the 2010 season. It’s also only the second time in history that both teams enter NCAA Championships ranked among the Top 10 in the nation and the first since that 2010 season.
• Should the Lobo men hold to their ranking at NCAA Championships, it’d be their best finish in program history. They’ve only finished in the Top 10 in the team score at nationals twice with a 9th-place finish in 2004 and an 8th-place finish in 2009.
• In the women’s poll, the Lobos held steady at No. 10 even after beating out a No. 9 Utah team to finish third at Mountain Regionals on Saturday behind an individual title from Pamela Kosgei. The true freshman remains undefeated in collegiate races with an average margin of victory of 26.95 seconds.
• In the last 10 seasons in which the Lobo women have secured a team qualification to NCAA Championships, they’ve entered ranked among the top 10 nationally. It’s their 16th team appearance in the last 17 seasons.
• This is only the ninth weekly USTFCCCA poll in program history in which both squads are ranked in the Top 10 at the same time — three of which are the last three polls this season. Prior to this year, the two teams were both ranked No. 9 in the Week 5 poll in 2013 and both cracked the Top 10 in Weeks 4, 5 and 8 of 2010 before both being ranked No. 5 in 2010’s final poll ahead of NCAA Championships.
UNM MEN’S CROSS COUNTRY – WEEK 6 USTFCCCA RANKINGS
National Rank: No. 5
Mountain Region Finish: No. 2
UNM WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY – WEEK 5 USTFCCCA RANKINGS
National Rank: No. 10
Mountain Region Finish: No. 3
| NATIONAL POLLS |
PRESEASON |
WEEK 1 |
WEEK 2 |
WEEK 3 |
WEEK 4 |
WEEK 5 |
WEEK 6 |
| New Mexico (Men) |
#8 |
#8 |
#8 |
#8 |
#6 |
#6 |
#5 |
| New Mexico (Women) |
#20 |
#21 |
#17 |
#17 |
#8 |
#10 |
#10 |
