After leading the Lobo men to a team title with an individual win and new meet record at the biggest regular-season cross country meet of the year, New Mexico's Habtom Samuel has been named USTFCCCA National Athlete of the Week, the organization announced Monday.
It's the second national weekly award of Samuel's career -- he also was named National Athlete of the Week after winning Wisconsin Pre-Nationals a year ago.
In his season debut at Nuttycombe, Samuel made clear why he's the favorite to win it all at NCAA Championships in November with an individual win, beating out the second-place finisher by 7.6 seconds with a 22:58.0 finish.
The Eritrean junior anchored a 51-point outing for the Lobo men, outpacing all 17 teams in the field that entered this week ranked among the Top 30 in the most recent national USTFCCCA polls. Behind him, all five Lobo point-scorers packed in the Top 25 finishers – Collins Kiprotich (6th, 23:27.0) and Evans Kiplagat (9th, 23:32.6) joined him in the Top 10 and Vincent Chirchir (13th, 23:35.4) and Mathew Kosgei (22nd, 23:39.7) buttoned up the 51-point score. Along with Kosgei's new collegiate best, Iker Sanchez also posted his fastest 8K time yet to finish 56th (23:59.8) and Jayden Hernandez placed 178th (25:15.7).
Samuel now holds both the Nuttycombe Invitational meet record and the Zimmer Championship Course 8K record with his winning time from last year's UW Pre-Nationals meet (22:33.8). He also finished as NCAA Runner-Up on the same course in Madison at last year's National Championships despite losing a shoe halfway through the race. Samuel's time eclipsed Parker Wolfe's record of 23:04.0 set at last year's Nuttycombe, making him the first sub-23 minute 8K finisher in the history of collegiate cross country's most prestigious regular-season race.
UP NEXT
With regular-season racing now complete, the Lobos look to defend their 2024 men’s and women’s conference title sweep at Mountain West XC Championships in Fresno, Calif. on Oct. 31, with Pamela Kosgei making her long-awaited season debut. All of the action at MWC Championships will be free to stream via the MW Network, with live results available via GoLobos.com/XCResults. Follow @UNMLoboXCTF on IG and X for raceday updates, behind-the-scenes content and more.