Title Photo by Noah Gabrys

Running for Fun and Personal Bests: Part III: A Fifty-Year Streak

“Here we are,” North Central head coach Matt Sinnott says to the runners in the huddle around him. “We’re in the championship season. All the work you have done has been to get us here.”

It is fifty degrees—balmy for November in Chicago—and the sky above is an endless blue. The trees at St. James Farm Forest Preserve are sighing off their last remaining leaves. And eight teams have gathered today for the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) cross country championship. The postseason has begun. Nationals is twenty-one days away.

“You have a great body of work,” Sinnott reminds his athletes as they stack their palms in the center. “Tap into that. Tap into your chemistry. Tap into The Stripes.”

They chant “1-2-3 TEAM!” and return to the starting line to strip off their sweats, revealing their candy-striped singlets underneath. North Central teams have worn these uniforms, these same uniforms, at every National Championship and every conference meet since 1968. Each one is pockmarked with flecks of mud and stains from rusted safety pins. The Stripes do not bear the name of any team, but everyone in D3 knows who wears them. The jerseys are iconic, but North Central couldn’t order new ones if they wanted to. The company that made The Stripes went out of business years ago. The oldest models, still in use, are coated in a finish that causes modern dryers to burst into flames.

Yet despite (or probably because of) their well-loved status, the athletes cherish The Stripes. “Earning Your Stripes” is a sacred honor at North Central, recognized with a special ceremony the week before Conference every year. “The Stripes are about something bigger than yourself,” the original designer, former head coach Al Carius, told the 2024 team at this year’s ceremony. “They’re bigger than I, I, I, bigger than me, me, me.” The Stripes are an “invisible bond,” he says, connecting the teams since 1968 to the team of 2024. And at CCIWs, that 2024 team plans to add another link in that chain.

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The starting gun fires. Ten striped athletes leap off the line. Many of them know in the back of their mind that, if the next five miles don’t go the way they hope, this will be the last time they will wear The Stripes this year. The CCIW allows ten athletes to compete in the varsity race, but the NCAA allows only seven at Regionals and Nationals. The decision of which seven runners will represent North Central at those final two meets will largely depend on today’s outcome.

That winnowing looms over the runners as the field rushes down the starting field and dives into a thicket of dense trees. As the race begins, Patrick Gray, a finance professor at North Central who serves as the team’s academic mentor and a volunteer coach, offers the candy-striped athletes something else to think about instead. “Not everyone gets to be part of history,” he tells them. “Enjoy it.”

Indeed, history could be made today. If the men win the varsity race, North Central will have won fifty consecutive CCIW cross country titles in a row. It is the longest active conference championship streak in the NCAA. Today, the 2024 team hopes to bring it into its fifth decade.

Yet that streak almost snapped in the 2000s. After thirty years of consecutive CCIW conference victories, often by comfortable margins, in 2005, North Central scraped together a victory over Wheaton College by only two points. If North Central’s fifth man, Roland Hopkins, had run just five seconds slower, the conference streak would have died at thirty-years-old.

The hairsbreadth conference victory in 2005 marked the beginning of a desperate slide in North Central’s cross country performance during the 2000s—a slump that current athletes and coaches now call The Dark Years. Three weeks after nearly losing the conference streak, the team posted its worst performance at the National Championship meet since the founding of DIII: twelfth out of twenty-four teams. The next year, the Cardinals sunk to thirteenth. In 2007, they cratered to sixteenth. It remains the team’s worst performance at Nationals ever.

Although the cross country conference streak survived The Dark Years, in 2008 North Central lost to rival Augustana College on the track for the first time since 1985. To “lose a streak that’s lasted longer than you’ve been alive,” said John Lancaster, a sophomore at the time, “was devastating.”

Before 2000, North Central had finished worse than fourth only one time. Now, it seemed unclear if the coaches could right the ship. “Let’s take a moment of silence as the nation’s top program will falter for at least a decade,” wrote one poster on Letsrun.com. “Al Carius, thank you and it has been a pleasure.”

For those North Central alumni and coaches who watched the 2008 track conference streak snap, the start of the 2024 CCIW cross country championships offered a worrying flashback. As the field of seventy-five runners pops out from the woods half a mile into the race, Augustana’s Joe Langridge and Finbar Martin run shoulder to shoulder at the front. North Central’s top runners—Emerald Svienty, BJ Sorg, and Matt Jett—stalk behind them, close enough to reach out and touch but decidedly not in the lead. If the Cardinals want to take the streak to fifty, Augustana will make them work for it.

The Stripes are up for the challenge. After splitting the first mile in 4:39, Emerald, BJ, and Matt Jett seize the lead. The course turns onto a limestone path beneath a column of orange-leafed trees. The three pull ahead of Martin and Langridge. Then over the course of the next few miles, slowly, steadily, Emerald begins to break away from their teammates. As the 2K loops tick away, with the course diving again into the woods, then back on the limestone path, Emerald rolls alone at the front. They blast through the three-mile mark in 14:21. They have a nine-second lead over BJ and Matt Jett. And they are smiling.

Left to Right: BJ, Emerald, and Matt Jett lead the race. Photo by Dominick Gramarosso.

Behind the top three, runners from Augustana continue to battle with The Stripes. Langridge and Martin sit in fourth and fifth place, and further back the Viking’s Grant Ackard leads a pack of three North Central runners. Fifth-year Johnny Olenek wants to change that. Johnny finesses alongside the Augustana runner, looks over at him, and surges. As if they had talked about it beforehand, fellow fifth-year Clark Kelly surges along with him. The team calls this “the North Central move,” a deliberate strategy to break an opponent by blinding them with The Stripes.

It works. Ackard falls back, and Johnny and Clark pump ahead. In less than a hundred meters, they build a gaping lead over the Blue and Yellow.

The supreme confidence on display—from Emerald smiling to the North Central move—is one of the secrets to North Central’s fifty-year streak. It is born out of hundreds of miles and a dozen hard slogs at Lincoln Park just this year. It is a form of absolute certainty that replaces hope. And it represents a core pillar in Al’s coaching philosophy. He named it The Knowing.

Al first coined the term in 1987, when the team found itself in a five-year title drought, it’s longest in the first fourteen years of D3. Before the national meet, Al drew a line on the floor of the campus gym. “I asked each member of the team to cross this line if they would like to win,” Al wrote in his memoir. Every member of the team did so. He asked them to cross back over if they thought they could win, then cross a third time if they believed they could win. But “believing was not enough,” he told them, “we must Know that we will run well enough to win.” He asked them to step over the line one final time if they knew they would win. They did cross the line. And they did win.

Twenty years later, when The Dark Years left the team in another dry spell, The Knowing became a core theme of their return to greatness. But that knowledge only comes through hard work. After the team’s national performances spluttered, ending in the sixteenth place embarrassment in 2007, Al made practice mandatory. He required athletes to complete the full workout at Lincoln Park on Monday and the weekly hill workout on Wednesday. And he insisted on timely reporting of weekly mileage.

Shockingly, North Central had won twelve national titles without these requirements. For Al, “the thought of making people run ran counter to my whole coaching philosophy!” But with these changes, he told his team, “We are going forward. What is most important is what we know and that we internalize the concepts, enjoy the process, and continue to grow to personal bests and a collective team best at next year’s National meet.”

Finally, during the 2008 cross country season, a year after a sixteenth place finish and only a few months after losing the conference streak in track, the team started to gain traction. They won the regular season Oshkosh Invitation. Then Regionals. “Wholeness and completeness must come from within,” Al wrote to the team afterwards. “All the characteristics have blended together into our ‘Knowing.’” A week later, North Central jumped fourteen spots from the year before to place second at the 2008 national championships. “That 2008 team saved our program,” Al exhaled in his memoir. “They ‘knew’ they would run well.”

The following year, they knew they would run even better. “I remember being more nervous coming to practice than I ever was going to a meet,” one athlete on the 2009 team recalled. After four months of pushing each other to their limit at Lincoln Park and Blackwell, “we had no doubt in our minds what was going to happen that year.”

What happened is that on a balmy day in Cleveland, Ohio, North Central won its first national championship in ten years. All seven runners won All-American honors, trouncing second-place Williams College 50-181. They broke the record for the largest margin of victory in DIII history. “They ran with their hearts,” Al said in a documentary later made about The Dark Years, appropriately called 16 2 1 and Beyond: The Fall and Rise of the North Central College Men’s Cross Country Team. “They ran for their teammates. They ran for their history. They ran with great character.”

The Knowing became a core component of North Central’s future success, as the team racked up six more titles in the next nine years. Since that most recent national championship in 2018, however, the cloud of another title drought has parked over Naperville. But at the 2024 CCIW championships, Sinnott sees a team that is once again running with The Knowing.

Emerald breaks the tape, alone and unchallenged, in 24:02, only eleven seconds shy of their personal best. Behind them, eight of the ten North Central runners in the varsity meet set personal records (PR). Johnny Olenek, the fifth-year who made the North Central move, continues his streak of PR’ing at every single major meet this season. Clark, who followed Johnny in that move, PRs by twenty-five seconds, breaking 25:00 for the first time and punching his ticket as one of the top seven for Regionals in two weeks.

Clark Kelly after the race. Photo by Noah Gabrys.

Not only that, but in the subsequent open race, where athletes not on their team’s top ten have an opportunity to race, twenty-eight of North Central’s forty entrants clock personal bests. With these times, The Cardinals handily win both contests. They even perfect scored in the Open Race—and took the top thirteen spots to boot.

“You are all part of something historic!” Sinnott trumpets to the full team in a massive huddle after the awards ceremony. “We didn’t want that fifty-year streak hanging over you. We didn’t want it to be weighty. We wanted it to be something you can be a part of. Something bigger than yourself, something older than all of you. Older than me!” The team laughs. “Not older than Dale, though.”

The team laughs even harder. Dale Koepnick is the team much-beloved assistant coach, who ran for North Central himself starting in the 1970s. During his four years, the team won three national titles, with Dale serving as captain during the 1981 victory. And now, forty-three CCIW victories later, Dale clears his throat.

“Yeah, I just wanted to say.”

His voice is wavering. The laughter stops.

Dale has his arms draped around two of his athletes. He hangs between them, leaning forward. There are tears in his eyes. The weight of fifty years of cross country greatness—and of the national championship in only three weeks—hangs over all of them.

“I’m so proud of the men you are,” Dale chokes out at last. “And I’m so proud of the men you are becoming.”

Cam Mallett is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He served as captain of his D3 cross country team at Berry College in Rome, Georgia before receiving his PhD from Penn State. He talks about running and sports history on his TikTok page, Footnotes With Cam.

Photos: Dominick Gramarosso is a Graduate Assistant for Men’s Cross Country and Track & Field at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. A long time member of the program, his love for the program is embedded to his work as a photographer, a writer, and a coach. You can find his work on Instagram at domg.photos.

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Part Two: Mondays at the Park

It seems that most cross country teams have sacred ground. A trail, a road, a park, some location that is significant to the program and its history. The most famous is Magnolia Road, the punishingly-steep long run route for the University of Colorado, immortalized in Running with the Buffaloes. Oregon, of course, has Pre’s Trail. But even less storied high school and college teams have their own hallowed routes. These are places where the legends of the program have come for decades. These are places where runners go to get better.

The sacred ground for the North Central College men’s cross country team is an ordinary strip of grass known as Lincoln Park. In a place with as much green space as Naperville, Illinois, it would be easy to miss that this span of grass is even a dedicated park. Half a mile long and less than a football field wide, Lincoln Park is hemmed in by a road with ranch-style houses on one side and the DuPage River on the other. There is no playground equipment, barely any trees, and exactly one bench. Local residents rarely use it, to the point that the Park District has erected a decoy dog made of plywood to (unsuccessfully) scare off an invasion of geese. Every college cross country team in the nation is likely within ten miles of a similar patch of grass, be it a park, a corner of campus, or just the shoulder on the side of the highway.

Yet despite Lincoln Park’s humble appearance, the longtime North Central head coach Al Carius decided to make it a cornerstone of his program. From the fall of 1968 to his retirement in 2020, Al brought the team to this grassy patch almost every single autumn Monday. As North Central runners pounded thousands of miles into the ground, and piled up over a dozen national titles, the spiritual bond with Lincoln Park only grew. Now, at the end of every season, the coaches honor those seniors who have spilled literal blood, sweat, and tears into the greenbelt by gifting them glass jars filled with earth from the park. “It’s not dirt,” Al was always careful to clarify about the contents of the jars. “Dirt is something people don’t want. This is soil. It’s priceless.”

As with any journey to a sacred site, just getting to Lincoln Park is a challenge. The 2024 team begins their pilgrimage on a Monday afternoon early in the season. It is the first workout of the year at the park, and after a brief warm-up and drills, the massive blob of fifty runners is itching to get started. None more so than Emerald Svienty, the fifth-year senior and team captain who finished third in the nation at last year’s cross country nationals. With a bushy mustache, mane of curly hair, piercings in both ears, and a thigh tattoo of a flamingo, Emerald look like if Steve Prefontaine spent more time in Portland, Oregon instead of Eugene. Yet despite their casual appearance, Emerald snaps the entire mass of runners to attention simply by yelling out “All set?”

Fifty-one voices chant in reply, “You bet.” And the workout begins.

It starts with a tempo. The mob of runners spins their legs through the bustling residential streets of Naperville, following a five mile route that will deposit them at Lincoln Park. At some points in the season, this opening tempo is just a casual affair. But other times, they blast it. “Different days we’ll emphasize different things,” volunteer assistant coach Zach Hird explains after this early August workout. “The tempo today wasn’t that hard. The top group only ran about 25:50. Some days it’s going to be 23:50.” Indeed, a few weeks later, that same group clocked 23:00 flat for their five miles.

But no matter how fast the team runs their five-mile tempo, the real workout only begins when they reach Lincoln Park. “A lot of history here,” current Head Coach Matt Sinnott says with a smile as the freshmen step onto the soil for the first time. He nods toward the only sign that designates this space as anything other than a patch of grass. Affixed to a light pole is a street sign. Though commissioned by the city, it is not the traditional traffic green or fluorescent yellow. It is Cardinal red with white lettering. “Lincoln Park,” it reads. “Home of North Central Cross Country.” Below, it lists every one of the program’s nineteen national championships.

It is unclear what first drew Al to this spot fifty years ago, but it is clear why he kept coming back. The ground is choppy, the grass is long, and the turns are sharp. It is perfect for cross country. Decades of runners have worn a half-mile loop into the grass along the perimeter of the park. This loop starts at the base of a giant ash tree, and the athletes huddle underneath its shade. They split into five groups based on the times they plan to run their miles in, and with another “All set?” “You bet!” the groups take off one at a time.

These five waves of runners race down the western edge of the park, hugging the road. The first three hundred meters of the loop are also the easiest—flat, open, and with a slight downhill.

Once the groups hit the other end of the park, there’s a hairpin turn, and everyone veers right to follow the edge of the river back to the start. The line of fifty runners tap-dances across four giant ditches and culverts on the low-lying side of the park. “I swear one of those wasn’t there last year,” Emerald says later, bewildered. “Lincoln Park is on its own tectonic plate.”

The loop’s final hundred meters smooth out again as the runners glide along the water. Then they hug the ash tree, make a complete 180-degree turn, and swing back around for a second loop. Two laps is not quite a full mile, but it is close enough. The runners take ninety seconds to regroup, grab some water, think about their life choices, and line up again.

A full Lincoln Park is four mile repeats. Their goal is to run each mile as fast as possible and run each rep faster than the one before.

“This is the hardest workout I’ve ever done,” says sophomore Nolan Crooks. “And we do it every week.”

Indeed, every week. Sometimes the details change. As the season goes on, the length of the recovery portion gradually gets longer. In October, they cut down to 800 repeats instead of miles. After particularly tough races, the entire team will only do a three-mile tempo. But for the most part, every Monday during cross country season, you can find the North Central men’s team gutting out mile repeats at Lincoln Park.

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Emerald plants an aggressive flag in the ground by running the first mile in 4:40. After ninety seconds of rest, they again lead on the second. But as they pace a 4:36 mile from the front, they are joined by teammate BJ Sorg.

Though he is only a sophomore, BJ is one of the fastest runners in the nation. He was the first freshman to cross the finish line at the 2023 national meet, and today he runs stride for stride with Emerald, who finished third in that same race. All-American honors at the end of the season are a real possibility. But still, it’s only August, and the winter grays of cross country nationals feel impossibly distant under the oppressive late-summer heat. BJ finishes the second mile dripping with sweat. He runs his hands through his blond buzzcut and throws off his ski goggle-like sunglasses.

BJ is intense, almost imperious. He thrives at Lincoln Park, he thrives at North Central, and he intends to drag the program out of its post-COVID slump through sheer force of will. “People are fed up with the mediocrity,” he insisted after nationals in 2023, when North Central finished eleven points away from claiming their first title in five years. “Maybe mediocrity is not the right word, because third place shouldn’t be seen as mediocre. But for us, I think it should be.”

Yet despite that fervor, he is still only nineteen years old. When not in running shorts, BJ wears yellow Crocs and oversized anime t-shirts he crops himself. He watches Dancing with the Stars and plays Guitar Hero with his teammates on overnight trips. His passion comes from a deep, deep love for running that blossomed in high school. “I started to fall in love with the grind. Training every day and doing everything to get better.”

North Central proved a natural fit. He dove headfirst into what he calls the “aura” of the program: its history, its traditions, its culture. Nowhere does he better embody that zeal than during mile repeats on Monday. “Bring fire,” BJ tells his teammates before the next rep. “Bring fire to Lincoln Park. Because we need it.”

BJ indeed brings fire on the third rep. Outpacing even Emerald, he blasts the mile in 4:34. Sunglasses back on, eyes forward down the length of Lincoln Park, he and his teammates ready for the next one.

BJ (front, center) and Emerald (front, right) at Lincoln Park in October of 2024. Photo by Dominick Gramarosso.

The temperature climbs to eighty degrees as the runners start the final mile. Droplets of sweat fly off their arms as they swing into the start. Each runner has clocked three miles almost as hard as they possibly can, and now they dig deep to do it one more time. Many of the freshmen, still learning the rhythms and realities of Lincoln Park, have gone out too hard and blown up. A few have already dropped out completely after two or three reps.

Those who remain blitz down the grassy straightaway, hit the jagged right turn, clear the culverts, and drive towards home along the river. They thunder toward the ash tree to start their second lap.

Close to twenty people huddle under the branches, clapping and hollering. Over the noise, assistant coach Tim Hird gives them something to imagine. “It’s Nationals!” he yells. “Let’s go!” It’s September and already he tasks his athletes with mentally preparing for the end of the season.

The cue from Tim to picture the national championship lights a fire in the top seven. BJ charges down the final straightaway one last time and clocks a 4:32 mile. It is his fastest on a day where he averaged 4:35 for all four. Behind him, the other members of North Central’s top five barrel through the finish line, each of them averaging 4:43 or faster on the day.

The rest of the team stampedes through after them. When the dust settles, Head Coach Matt Sinnott checks his stopwatch. Even after a tempo and three gut-busting miles, seventeen runners broke five minutes on their final rep. Seventeen more averaged under 5:17 per mile.

“I’m pretty damn impressed!” Sinnott cheers as the exhausted runners form a massive huddle underneath the ash tree and red street sign. The 2024 team looks up at the championships listed on that sign, knowing that they were won by stacking up workouts almost identical to this one. Today’s results were incredible, but also, in the fifty-year history of the team, completely ordinary. For today was just another Monday at Lincoln Park.

Cam Mallett is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He served as captain of his D3 cross country team at Berry College in Rome, Georgia before receiving his PhD from Penn State. He talks about running and sports history on his TikTok page, Footnotes With Cam.

Photos: Dominick Gramarosso is a Graduate Assistant for Men’s Cross Country and Track & Field at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. A long time member of the program, his love for the program is embedded to his work as a photographer, a writer, and a coach. You can find his work on Instagram at domg.photos.

After a summer hiatus, we are back with our first ever preseason rankings, presented by Tailwind Nutrition and Boulderthon.

We polled the coaches, looked at previous results, and came up with this comprehensive ranking guide which will ultimately become irrelevant when the season kicks off.

Either way, we’re excited for this season. We have a lot planned for the year with a new series, new voices, and much more.

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Read the Full Rankings Report here.

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Part One: The Day Before

Nineteen hours before the 2024 D3 National Championship, a bus full of runners hoping to win it all slides through the late-November darkness. Like many other squads competing in the meet in Terre Haute tomorrow, they are descending on the only Olive Garden in a fifty-mile radius.

The runners aboard the bus have all overdressed for the fast-casual establishment, wearing identical black pants and white shirts. Their red-and-white-striped ties match the uniforms they will wear in the morning. Those barbershop-quartet singlets bear no name, no text, no logo. But every team tomorrow will see those candy stripes and know they belong to the North Central College men’s cross country team.

The seven athletes competing in the morning and the handful of alternates prepared, if necessary, to take their place lounge across the bus’s fifty-five mostly empty seats. Since the season began in August, most of these runners have grown accustomed to running eighty, ninety, a hundred miles a week. Now that they have tapered for Nationals, they do not know what to do with their restless legs. They drape them across the narrow aisle or prop them against the empty seat ahead of them. No one says a word. A growing sense of quiet, dancing between focus and apprehension, hangs in the darkness.

The journey of literally thousands of miles which has brought them to this nervy moment began ninety-nine days earlier. On August 15, 2024, the team gathered for their first meeting of the season, one day before the first official practice. After a long elephant summer of base training, fifty-five runners returned to North Central’s postcard-sized campus, located thirty miles outside of Chicago in Naperville, Illinois.

Fittingly for a team as storied as the Cardinals, they met in the college’s sports museum. A glass-plated exhibit against the far wall celebrates the cross-country program’s runaway success—even as it struggles to keep up with it. Every time the program won another title, the museum curator crudely updated a plaque listing every win by pasting over the total, but they gave up after the team hit sixteen.

That number is still three short, but the failure to remain current is understandable. North Central has won more men’s national titles than any other cross country team in Divisions I, II, or III. Across all sports and every division in the NCAA, only seven individual programs have more national titles. Entire D1 schools known for their athletic brands—including the University of Tennessee, Syracuse, and Texas A&M—have won fewer national championships across all of their sports than the Cardinal’s nineteen in just men’s cross country.

North Central achieved this division-defining success under the stewardship of one man, the long-time head coach, Al Carius. For more than half a century, Al led the team with the enthusiasm of your favorite motivational speaker’s favorite motivational speaker. When he first arrived at North Central in 1966, the program struggled to put even five runners on the starting line. When he retired fifty-four years later, North Central had finished in the top three at Nationals forty-one times. It remains the only team in D3 history to qualify for every single national meet. And in 2000, the governing body of collegiate running named Al Carius D3’s “Coach of the Century.”

After his retirement, the job of filling Al’s massive shoes eventually passed to one of his former athletes. Matt Sinnott is a broad-shouldered forty-something with a spiky crewcut, smile wrinkles, and tattoos covering his tree-trunk legs (he himself says he should have been a long-distance speed-skater). On one leg is an inking of a North Central runner and a recreation of the legendary Japanese woodblock print, The Great Wave. On the other, a phoenix rises from the ashes next to the Japanese symbol for “Big Brother.”

The oldest of six children born to a carpenter and martial arts instructor, Sinnott grew up in nearby North Aurora, graduated from North Central in 2003, taught physics for a decade at his old high school, and returned to his old college as a volunteer coach in 2013. “I’m the poster child for attachment issues,” he grins. After nine years, first as a volunteer coach, then as a paid assistant, Sinnott became the head coach in 2022. And with a clearing of his throat, he officially kickstarts his third season overseeing D3’s most storied team. “The summer is over,” he announces to the fifty-five runners in front of him. “The season has started. Welcome, everyone.”

The smattering of athletes is arrayed on the floor of the museum, stacks of empty pizza boxes leaning precariously in the corner. Sinnott sits in a plastic chair next to a glass display case housing one of the team’s iconic uniforms, a red-and-white candy-striped running singlet. The team has worn these jerseys— the same jerseys—at every national meet since 1968. They represent a core pillar of North Central’s history, a candy-cane thread connecting today’s athletes to those who wore this same fabric decades ago. Sinnott begins his inauguration speech by waving in the air another piece of the team’s connective tissue: a red three-ring binder.

“What is this?” he asks rhetorically, flipping the spine out to his audience to show the year “1970” printed along the side. “This binder is a record of an entire cross country season. All the rosters, workouts, and race results are in here from a single season, fifty-four years ago. There are dozens of these in my office.” He shows them two other binders, one from 1987, another from 2004, and thumbs through the weathered pages. Al had compiled each of them during his decades with the team. “Each of these binders tells a story. A good story, about what that team did and how they did it. It’s a snapshot of memories. This is what they accomplished.”

“But what have we accomplished?” He looks around the room. “Not much. And that’s not a slam; we are on Day One. Our binder is as blank as a piece of paper.” For emphasis, he pulls from one of the binders a blank, white sheet. “You guys have a lot of great memories ahead of you. We’re going to put it all in our binder so that people twenty years from now can pull this season off the shelf and read about what we accomplished.”

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Boulderthon has it all. From the 5k to the marathon, there is a race for everyone. Believe you can and you will!

Boulderthon is offering $20 off to our readers for the Half or Marathon. Use code D3GloryDays at checkout.

Everyone hopes that when the 2024 binder goes on the shelf, it will tell the story of a team that emerged victoriously from a six-year championship drought. Only once before has North Central gone this long without winning a title—a dreaded ten-year slump the team still refers to as “The Dark Years.” This second downturn began in the COVID-19 pandemic, when D3 did not offer any championships in 2020 and North Central’s best and most experienced runners graduated en masse. At the first Nationals back in 2021, the first since Al’s retirement, the Cardinals placed fifteenth. It was their second-worst performance ever and only the fourth time outside of the top ten. The following year, they finished seventh.

“We had a culture dip during COVID,” Sinnott admits to the team gathered in the museum. “We are trying to bring that expectation back up.”

Recent efforts have proven successful. Last year, in the closest national meet ever contested, North Central took third place. Eleven agonizing points separated them from the 2023 title, a margin so small that if one Cardinal had finished just five seconds faster, they would have won it all. The 2024 team, still smarting from that loss, has prepared better and run more miles this summer than any team since COVID. Everyone in this room dreams of winning the program’s first national championship since 2018. They dream of a redemption story.

But Sinnott offers a caveat, an important one. “We’re not just doing this to win a championship. That’s fun, but that’s not our metric for success. There were some really good guys who have come through in the last five years. They didn’t win a championship. But does that mean they learned nothing about how to be successful?”

Several runners emphatically shake their heads no. “Not at all.” Sinnott insists. “They learned how to develop, how to embrace this life of discipline. They learned how to become something they’ve never been before.”

When you ask anyone on the team or any of their coaches why North Central has been so successful in cross country, they point not to their workout plan or their recruiting operation, but to this notion that the team teaches runners how to be successful in both running and in life. North Central cross country is not just a team, but a lifestyle. Living that lifestyle makes you a better athlete and a better person.

This made up a core tenet of Al’s coaching philosophy, of how he ran the program during his fifty-four year tenure, and of how Sinnott has stewarded the team since. Indeed, in his appropriately titled 2022 book, Run for Fun and Personal Bests: A Recipe for Long-Term Growth and Success, Al wrote that “my purpose as a coach is not about winning, but rather about our student-athletes becoming ‘Winners in Life’ through the physical in the pursuit of success.”

That phrase, “run for fun and personal bests,” distills the philosophy of the North Central program. It appears everywhere: on shirts, on email signatures, and on tiny wallet cards that the athletes carry with them.

It stands in stark contrast to the famous phrase often (and falsely) attributed to Vince Lombardi: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” As all sport, especially at the college level, drifts towards a cutthroat competition, Al’s philosophy charts a different course. “One of my biggest concerns about the present state of education is witnessing the slow separation between athletics and academics at the collegiate level,” Al critiqued in his book. Athletes are increasingly focused on “what they can ‘get’ monetarily from being an athlete.” Al’s fears only deepened in the early 2020s as Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals have turned big-time college athletics upside down, bringing new money and more attention to the big-name D1 teams.

In the middle of that upheaval, North Central has built a philosophy around fun and personal growth. Like all teams in D3, North Central does not offer athletic scholarships. The program believes that running for pleasure and personal growth are much stronger motivations than money could ever be. Yet the question remains: after one of the most closely contested national meets the year before and in the midst of profound changes in college athletics, will that be enough?

The group gathered in the North Central sport museum in August of 2024 believe the answer is a resolute “yes.” Sinnott agrees. “You guys have a lot of great memories ahead of you,” Sinnott tells them. “And I’m so excited to be a part of it. We have so much to put in our binder. And tomorrow is our first entry.”

Ninety-nine entries later, that group of fifty-five runners gathered in the museum has winnowed down to the seven on the bus traveling to Olive Garden the night before the national championship. Those seven had logged dozens of workouts and hundreds of miles in their 2024 binder. As the charter bus noses into a parking lot Terre Haute, with only the final page in that binder left to be written, Sinnott relaxes into his seat at the front. Only a pasta dinner and a good night’s rest separates the team from the national championship. The roster is set. The hay is in the barn. Tomorrow, they will try to break a six-year curse.

Then a runner walks up the aisle from the back of the bus. “Hey, I just wanted to let the coaches know,” he says. “Somebody just threw up in the bathroom.”

Cam Mallett is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He served as captain of his D3 cross country team at Berry College in Rome, Georgia before receiving his PhD from Penn State.

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This monthly series follows the training of four D3 alumni, somewhere between sub-elite and elite, as they train to place within the top 25 at the Berlin Marathon on Sunday September 27: Lars Dewall, Elliot Kadrofske, Sam Forstner, and Christopher Brenk.

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Name: Lars Dewall

School: College of St. Scholastica

Current Residence: San Diego, California

Current Affiliation: Lane Zero Athletics / Coach: Chad Salmela

PR: 2:12:30

Training is something that always seems straightforward in some sense, but it is constantly shifting and evolving as time goes on. Whether this means making personal tweaks or rolling with modern shifts and practices, I always think it’s important to understand the “why” of what you’re doing.

Going way back to my high school years I experienced decent success, but it wasn’t until my college years and working with my coach I began to lean on heart rate and lactate based training. In my early college years this was a really good gauge for me to measure in numbers if I was actually going to the correct intensity for that day. This is something that took me a long time to really implement correctly and get to work to my advantage. These principles I learned in college continue to drive the engine and methods of my training today.

Currently, things look different than they did in college in terms of my training mainly due to the fact that the marathon is simply a much longer race that relies essentially zero on the anaerobic system. Personally, I actually find it much easier to train for than any track events, despite the big training days. Each of my marathon blocks I’ve focused on attacking one weakness I feel that is holding me back. Being 25 and having many more years to come, I think this is an advantageous approach to training without changing too much. This block I have focused on implementing long run workouts with purpose vs easier long runs. In addition to this, I have made a much more deliberate focus to improve my nutrition when training, especially during these specific workouts. Each of my builds; excluding grandmas, I have increased my miles slightly. Going into CIM, I sat around 100-115. Boston more so 105-120. This time around going into Berlin, it looked more like 110-130. Although it’s a high load, having the summer off teaching has allowed me to absorb the uptick in miles efficiently so far. I am a very firm believer in keeping my easy days incredibly easy. I usually am following heart rate data and or lactate data to check in on this. This in turn, allows me to push on days that I actually need to push and get the best training adaptations. Keeping my easy runs truly easy has also allowed me to keep high volume consistency over long periods of time without overtraining and breaking down. I keep around 30-40% of my volume on a soft surface (tread or dirt) to decrease the overall mechanical load during the week during these big weeks.

Although this can require discipline when running with friends and teammates, I do my very best to make it work.

Although the team has people that have different things during the week, we do a good job of making things work. With people running different coaches, races and schedules; this also can get tricky to navigate, but it’s nice to know that the team has each other’s back even if we don’t get to meet and do the exact same thing every day. We really put in a good effort to do workouts together, so we can push each other and mimic race day practices.

The jumps I’ve made in running from college following my debut in 2025 at Grandma’s has been something I can confidently attribute to the training approach I have taken since I was 18 or 19. With the skiing background I always felt like I was suited for longer distances outside of the NCAA distances. Having the efficiency from years of high ski volume alongside my running has made the transition to full time running at high loads pretty manageable. With my coaches guidance together we’ve created a training plan that adopts what we’ve always done while refining weak points.

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Name: Elliot Kadrofske

School: St. Olaf College, Class of 2020

Current Residence: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Current Affiliation: Collegeville Track Club / Self-Coached

PR: 2:21:46

I must admit my training isn’t the norm for most marathoners under 2:30. I embrace cross training in the form of stationary biking, and genuinely love what it injects into my training. The variety keeps running exciting, allows me to be the healthiest athlete I can, and has me enjoying the process to the max. Having two days where I just zone out, watch some TV, and spin at 20mph has my runs feeling fresh. The days of dreading a maintenance run are behind me and my legs feel all the more ready for the important workouts. Ever since dealing with repetitive hip issues for the last three years, I’ve taken a roughly five days running, two days biking approach. When the marathon cycle ramps up, I’ll throw in one or two biking/running doubles. Also in the midst of a 12-week cycle (my personal preference), I will take two non-consecutive weeks of all running, no biking, to really punish the legs and get some truly higher mileage on them. Somewhere up in the lower to mid-90s. And in regards to workouts for this upcoming cycle, I’m trying something new…at least to me, that is. I’ll still knock out one big marathon workout a week and/or a long run, but I also want to incorporate some more mile/5K paced stuff. I think acclimating my legs to faster speeds will work wonders on getting marathon pace (~5:16) feeling more manageable and relaxed.

Overall, a week for me looks roughly like:

MONDAY: medium-length bike @ ~19mph

TUESDAY - 5K/mile paced reps in the 30 second to 2 minute range

WEDNESDAY - Group run with Collegeville Track Club at maintenance effort

THURSDAY - Marathon paced workout with 7-9 miles total of race pace work

FRIDAY - long bike ride for the week @19-20mph

SATURDAY - Long run with Collegeville Track Club

SUNDAY - AM maintenance run, PM shorter bike @18-19mph

*Some weeks I’ll combine my Th workout with my Sat LR, making Th more maintenance miles

**Ten weeks out from race day last week had me finish with 61 miles of running & 3hrs of biking.

For the last three or four years, I’ve worked to create a healthier relationship with running. High school and college versions of myself were defined by being the last guy at practice and, in high school, consistently raking in the team’s end-of-season effort award. And while that level of dedication was indeed admirable, I can’t say my mental motivations were always the healthiest, especially in my collegiate and early post-collegiate days. Minutes and miles often became just that. Minutes and miles. No real purpose behind them and always needing a higher number to feel a greater sense of self worth. It didn’t help matters that higher miles were also paired with more calories burned, another number that constantly danced in my head. And while this ‘more is better’ philosophy worked alright for running solid times in college, my relationship with the sport was far from healthy. After an injury took me out from January-June 2021 (most likely due to excessive mileage and lack of stretching), I’ve slowly been working to retool and redevelop that relationship. During the time away, and especially as I dove back into running, I began to recognize that my all-in approach just didn’t create a healthy mentality, lifestyle, or body. I now want all my minutes to have meaning. I strive for smart training ahead of overtraining. And I treat food as fuel, not as reward. Those three things truly have been huge to both redeveloping my love for the sport and keeping my times on an upward trajectory. Meaningful minutes help minimize overtraining. Two days of biking creates some semblance of flexibility and improves the mental side of things, while keeping my weak hip flexors intact. And establishing a more holistic and less anal relationship with food has given my body the strength it needs to train at this high level under this new, flexible regiment. It’s been an incredibly rewarding redevelopment the last five years, and I couldn’t be happier with where it has gotten me.

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Are you looking for your next race? You hear Noah talk about how much he loves running in Boulder and now’s your chance to see why he loves it so much. is Boulder, CO’s signature downtown marathon series taking place on September 27, 2026!

Boulderthon has it all. From the 5k to the marathon, there is a race for everyone. Believe you can and you will!

Boulderthon is offering $20 off to our readers for the Half or Marathon. Use code D3GloryDays at checkout.

Name: Sam Forstner

School: Ripon College, Class of 2023

Current Residence: Stevens Point, Wisconsin

Current Affiliation: North Coast Running / Coach: Tyler Morey

PR: 2:16:58

Going all the way back to when I first started running, there never was a time when I could recall someone praising my speed or raw abilities. To this day, I still don’t know if I have a fast twitch fiber in my body, but I can vividly recall countless comments along the lines of “that kid sure has an engine” or “buddy just doesn’t quit, does he?” - The mentality of stacking blocks has been an area I’ve always taken great pride in, and in turn got me to a point where training became more fun than the racing itself at times.

In college, I never had a flashy training regiment by any means, but if there’s one thing I did, it was putting myself through the wringer every workout while constantly upping the mileage season after season. Every day had mileage set out to the tee, workouts had precise paces to hit, and a whole season was laid out on an excel sheet before a mile was ever ran. While the approach was brutally straightforward and somewhat militant, it is honestly a miracle I never injured myself, as I hardly learned to listen to my body. Certainly, there was still much to be desired. I hardly crosstrained, recovery protocol was simply to eat/sleep, and I actively avoided strength training as if it were a badge of honor. Let’s not forget college always had ample opportunities for “festivities” to take place. For actively getting an education, I must say it certainly wasn’t my brightest hour.

Fast forward to life after college, my mindset took a complete 180. The freedom of exploring my own routine left me with infinite possibilities of what I could dabble in. I began going to the gym, I started adding in deliberate crosstraining time, and I stumbled across the revolutionary idea of fueling during sessions. All of these factors gave me one of my biggest realizations - what if I valued total volume between all aspects of training, rather than just what the mileage chart says? For me, this was Pandora’s box. While I was able to rapidly get to my first 100 mile week, smash my first 20 mile long run, and do so while adding in the extra training facets, I frankly had no idea what the hell I was doing. Mash together starting a new job, adapting to a new town, and coaching myself simultaneously created a recipe brewing to implode. At my marathon debut, this mental fatigue showed, as every scenario that could’ve gone wrong due to a lack of planning showed up. I arrived the night before the race, barely made it to bib pickup, bought an industrial grade dinner from a discount grocery store (all traditional restaurants were booked), and called it a night in the steamy dorms. The morning of, I frantically rushed to the buses to get in the queue, only to realize my grave mistake once we already departed. I forgot all my gels. Upon a late arrival to the start area, the opportunity for a bathroom break was far gone, leaving me no choice but to hold the urge. I scrambled up the corral as far as I could, but clearly not far enough. Not 3 seconds after the gun went off amidst the crazed nature of the pack, I found myself staring down the starter marshall and proceeded to run us both into the pavement as if I was a brick shithouse linebacker. What does one do from there? Well of course, my mind ignored all rationality and said to immediately catch up to the lead pack, where I found myself running 10 seconds a mile faster than goal pace while dueling with the eventual women’s course record holder for a span of 15 miles. I’ll admit, going from being a nobody in college, to all of a sudden finding yourself mano-a-mano with an Olympian, all while being broadcasted by the courtesy vehicle as the lead woman - it was quite the surreal transition. That endorphin high lasted for a good 90 minutes, until the realization set in that I was completely tapped, no gels in hand, and there was still 10 miles to go. Maybe full sending wasn’t a great idea. As they say, misery loves company, and a cold sweeping downpour began by this time of the race to solidify the pending atmosphere. By the graces of David Goggins “Can’t hurt me” blaring through my mind, the reminder that I was only 40% exhausted kept my worst mile above a 5:50 pace miraculously. That remaining 55 minutes was the most grueling pain I had ever endured, but I have carried it with me to this day as a reminder that it can ALWAYS be worse.

After the race, the opportunity to be coached under Tyler Morey at North Coast Running presented itself, and I jumped on it without hesitation. For my upcoming races, I now had a new layer of accountability and the mental burden of planning everything taken off my plate. The approach of “effort based training” was a novel concept to me at the time, but I am beyond grateful it crossed my path. The core philosophy of learning to listen to the body, but not being afraid to keep adding volume became an extremely fun yet challenging balancing act. As a result, I invested heavily into the areas I knew I was lacking. I bought a road bike, I doubled down on fueling practice, but most importantly learned how to decompress and mentally unload after stacking days. By repeating this cycle, I had an unbelievable realization that I had doubled my average weekly training volume in a matter of 18 months. By allowing myself to pull back the reigns when needed, but pivoting in a way that still allowed me to put in work for the day, I had gone from 13 hours of training a week in college to weeks upwards of 25-30 hours. It truly became a snowball effect where the more I did, the hungrier I became to get back out there. Within the past year, I’ve had 5 hour+ training days, 27 mile long runs, 150 mile training weeks, countless grueling heat training sessions, all simply for the love of the game in the sake of self improvement.

In the current moment, this process has now become more about refining the time I do have available to me. I recently transitioned from an hourly worker to salaried, meaning I have less of a consistent work routine and overall time in the day to train. This new lifestyle certainly has challenged me in more ways than I would’ve imagined, but it is a constant reminder to stay curious, think big picture, and most importantly - to love the grind.

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Name: Christopher Brenk

School: St. Olaf College, Class of 2020

Current Residence: Laramie, Wyoming

Current Affiliation: Unaffiliated / Self-Coached

PR: 2:17:34

My training is more or less the amalgamation of my favorite training philosophies from each of my past major coaches. It can be challenging to train here; the high plains are tempestuous. My hair blows constantly so I always wear a hat and the peak UV is 11 on a sunny day which there are 300 of in the year, and a thunderstorm conjures out of positively nothing which turns an easy run into an all-out sprint back to the car, and the lungs always feel wretched at 7,200 feet and higher, and it’s just me out there. You see the point. My “self-coaching” is imagining dialogues with my old coaches when I’m planning and thinking things through. It is not challenging to imagine what they’d say:

-From my high school coaches Coach Lawrence, Westphal, Kupres, and Snee, I still gravitate towards simplistic workouts like mile repeats, Ks, and timed hills. I still frequently do their general strength routine they taught me in 2012. And whenever my mind starts with excuses during a solo track workout, I can still see Coach Lawrence bellowing on the sidelines at an intensity which I have never experienced since, and likely will never again. I am continually thankful for the level of care and commitment they exuded to all of us.

-From Phil Lundin, my first college coach, I constantly apply his wonderful mentality that all of this is really not that important in the grand scheme of things, and anything can be changed or tweaked. There was not a single time when I would come up to Phil and ask what if I did Y instead of the prescribed X for the day, and he wouldn’t clap and say, “Let’s do it!” Phil would speak fewer words regarding the workout prescribed for us that day, and more on what he was excited to cook for dinner afterward. “Boys: let’s get the job done, and go home!”

-From Brian Power, my second college coach, I will never forget how kind and accommodating he was when I learned about my health condition, and how important it is to pick your battles. Easy days, it turns out, can be very easy, and I ran a whole lot of them that winter. On several occasions he verbally forbade us running under a certain pace on easy days, and I grew to more tangibly see from him the value of the recovery day in its purpose, towards a better subsequent workout.

-From Paul Vandersteen of Coach Steen Running, I prioritize a higher frequency of longer efforts and stronger long runs. I have fully implemented his signature mid-week MLR (medium long run) and occasional barn-burner long run-workout, which have drastically increased my aerobic capacity and confidence as a result.

I don’t run as much volume as I perhaps should, and my builds keep shortening. (Twin Cities 2024 I averaged 74 miles over 12 weeks and ran 2:22. Chicago 2025 I averaged 77 miles over 11 weeks and ran 2:19. Eugene 2026 I averaged 81 miles over 10 weeks and ran 2:17.) But certain factors work to my benefit. The first is being in Laramie itself, which hardens the resolve and constantly works its high altitude magic. The second is the elevation gain I run: I have aimed the past few years for approximately 200,000 feet of gain in a calendar year. (the bulk of that being outside the actual marathon training blocks themselves.) This has made my legs much stronger, forced me to slow down on easy days, and above all made any given run a lot more breathtaking, serene, and something to look forward to.

The final and most challenging component for me has been figuring out fueling: not during running itself but purely outside of it. A symptom of the disease I have is at any given time there are approximately a dozen razorlike ulcers in my stomach that were described as looking “like bear claws on a tree.” For a long time I thought it was normal to feel nauseous both while running, and after eating any large (frankly normal) quantity. With a set 3:15 practice in both high school and college, I didn’t eat nearly as much beforehand as I should have before out of fear of that pain, and so for the first 8 years of running I showed up chronically underfueled and causationally injured. Just like that, upon graduating in 2020 and establishing my own running schedule, I was able to eat more adequately and wait out that pain as long as necessary, and I haven’t had a serious injury since. It has been thrilling, at times, to see my progression after the recognition of this pattern so clearly in the sand for many years. But that doesn’t mean I wish I could change anything: if I “figured it out” in high school I would’ve likely aspired to go to a D1 school versus D3; and then my running would’ve been attached to my financials, and like more D1 runners than D3 (purely anecdotally speaking) I would’ve probably cast running aside as a product of the times to idly reminisce on today instead of something to continually do for fun, for personal bests, and for community.

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The Berlin Marathon is 8 weeks away. Lars, Elliot, Sam, and Christopher were all recently accepted into Puma’s PROJECT 3 for Berlin, supporting us with nutritionists, sports psychologists, camaraderie with other PROJECT 3 athletes, and an imposing amount of gear. Thank you to PROJECT 3!

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On September 27, four D3 alumni have the opportunity to do something rare and potentially novel: put multiple D3 runners in the top 25 of a world marathon major. (25th place at the Berlin Marathon last year was 2:17:35.) This opportunity has not arrived out of serendipity. To be successful at this point, X years from graduating, is to be continually driven. To be continually driven is to still find joy, camaraderie, and meaning in the ever-familiar process. For the four of us, meaning is partially sourced from the sense of a certain knocking on our doorstep. Something feels right around the corner; it dances in our peripheral vision. As we venture into the drudgery of summer running, whether still in college or a decade graduated, it’s important to have a narrative. A real sense of why. After the results are posted, what is your story to tell?

Name: Lars Dewall

School: College of St. Scholastica

Hometown: Stillwater, Minnesota

Current Residence: San Diego, California

Occupation: Teacher

Current Affiliation: Lane Zero Athletics / Coach: Chad Salmela

PR: 2:12:30

My name is Lars Dewall. I am a 2024 graduate from The College of St. Scholastica. I’m coming up on my first year in San Diego, California where I work as a middle school teacher and run for Lane Zero Athletics Club. I recently just completed my first year teaching and have been enjoying the first week of summer training. Coming up on a year in San Diego I have enjoyed my time teaching, meeting new athletes, and putting a meaningful intention into my racing career. Upon moving to California I’ve ramped up my marathon training running California International Marathon & The Boston Marathon in 2:14 & 2:12 respectively. Next up for me I will be racing the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon before heading back to CA to begin my Berlin Marathon structured build with my team. (update: Lars ran 1:04:06 for 7th place OA.)

Looking towards Berlin in September I have some overarching goals with deliberate focus points in preparation. Following my result at Boston and taking some time to reflect on where I am and where I want to go, the next barrier is the sub-2:10 mark. The direct steps and goals I have will be primarily centered around my preparation and recovery. The biggest goal I have to be able to attain this is to get better at fueling. In my experience at Boston in the professional field I was able to learn a lot on how I can fuel better not only in the marathon but in my training as well. I’ve begun implementing different fueling strategies and increasing my carb intake in training. Another goal I have is to improve my half marathon and leg speed to be able to realistically justify a sub 2:10 attempt, and continue to refine doing the little things even better - recovery, fueling and strength being the main ones that come to mind. Having a summer off work to continue to refine these will be a major bonus heading into Berlin 2026. The last goal I have for myself is to simply not get complacent and continue to learn from the amazing athletes I have the opportunity to train and race with regularly. Having them as well as my friends and family makes this project worth every drip of my time and energy.

Name: Elliot Kadrofske

School: St. Olaf College, Class of 2020

Hometown: Okemos, Michigan

Current Residence: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Occupation: Chef at Red Bench Bakery

Current Affiliation: Collegeville Track Club / Self-Coached

PR: 2:21:46

Hi, folks! I’m Elliot Kadrofske, a runner in the Twin Cities who went to school down in Northfield, Minnesota, at St. Olaf College. Originally from Okemos, Michigan, I found myself up in Minnesota in the fall of 2016 ready to kick off my college running career and have stayed in the state since. I’ve come to find a home in Minneapolis and it’s hard to imagine myself anywhere else. The running scene here is elite. The urban infrastructure is top tier, the local race circuit is super competitive and well organized, and most importantly, I’ve found a team to further support my running and social life post college. I meet up with Collegeville Track Club every Wednesday evening and Saturday morning for miles. Outside of that, I run and bike solo as a self-coached, post-collegiate marathoner. Job wise, I’ve spent the last six years baking and cooking, exploring both the sweet and savory side of the culinary world. Crafting ice cream flavors, putting together sandwich menus, and developing tons of soup recipes has allowed me to flex my creativity muscle in a way I never could’ve imagined coming out of college with a degree in biology.

As I look towards September 27th, an immense amount of excitement bubbles up inside of me. I’m absolutely stoked to have the opportunity to run one of the premier international marathons and return to a city I spent a month in during the winter of 2017 (through a January-term program at St. Olaf). I’ve got my eyes set on 2:19:00, with going a little under being ideal. The name of the game is continuing to grow my confidence in my ability to take a big swing at an OTQ in 2027. I’m still a ways off, but also, just close enough where I’d forever regret not taking a shot. About a year ago, I was pretty gutted to hear the time drop from 2:18 to 2:16, but the 10% chance I give myself of still achieving that goal gets me out the door every day. To lay down a time within 3 minutes of that barrier would be a big confidence booster.

As has been the case since I started up my marathoning career in mid-2023, my goal is to stay healthy and keep running fun. I’ve been nursing hip issues (thanks to some seriously weak hip flexors) the last couple of years, which has me incorporating a decent bit of stationary biking into my training. I’ve found the reduced running workload to really help those guys out. My right achilles tendon also started acting up the final 3 weeks of my Garry Bjorklund half marathon build (1:08:45 on June 20th). Alongside adjusting training for my injuries, it’s been refreshing to develop a new and healthier relationship with the sport post-college, as I work to not be so anal about the nitty gritty of training and have a more flexible and dynamic approach to my running. It’s a challenge, but an incredibly rewarding one, to find and achieve the injury-minimizing, brain-benefitting, PR-maximizing training that works for me. I plan to stick to that mindset for this upcoming cycle and see what I can drop on the streets of Berlin.

Are you looking for your next race? You hear Noah talk about how much he loves running in Boulder and now’s your chance to see why he loves it so much. is Boulder, CO’s signature downtown marathon series taking place on September 27, 2026!

Boulderthon has it all. From the 5k to the marathon, there is a race for everyone. Believe you can and you will!

Boulderthon is offering $20 off to our readers for the Half or Marathon. Use code D3GloryDays at checkout.

Name: Sam Forstner

School: Ripon College, Class of 2023

Hometown: Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin

Current Residence: Stevens Point, Wisconsin

Occupation: Underwriter (Transportation Dept.) - Sentry Insurance

Current Affiliation: North Coast Running / Coach: Tyler Morey

PR: 2:16:58

My name is Sam Forstner, and I am a diehard Wisconsinite who will always consider the place many view as a drunken, cheese-filled, iced-over wasteland as my beloved home. Although I was born and raised off the virtues of the Midwest, life is now presenting me with the incredible opportunity to travel around the world and pursue what I love. To provide some context as to how this journey unfolded, a little background knowledge may be helpful. I am a graduate from Wisconsin Rapids Lincoln High School. I attended Ripon College, where I studied finance, economics, and philosophy while I began to dabble in the world of competitive running. Growing up, the value of chipping away at a goal until the work is complete was deeply instilled within me. I never excelled at conventional stick & ball sports, so coming from a lineage of racers lended itself to exposing me to a completely different sporting environment from an early age: the ultra-competitive world of motocross and snowmobile racing. I grew up competing every weekend in this ragged environment up until college, when my passion for running (and strong influence from my coach to stop racing) took over. Running created a new outlet for me to see tangible growth from putting in the work, albeit with a little less concern for ending up with a crippling hospital bill. Shortly after coming oh so close to the national stage in college, I took my passion to the roads immediately, as I felt I had more to prove to myself.

Today, I’m living in Stevens Point, Wisconsin and working as an underwriter for Sentry Insurance, a home and job of which I am beyond grateful to have as parts of my life. The past two years since moving to the roads have been filled with incredible experiences, including races in Tokyo, Chicago, and Boston, where I saw my marathon time chip down by 9 minutes over a 15 month span, lowering to a 2:16:58 in the fall of 2025. Those performances have reinforced something I’ve believed for a while now: there’s still another level waiting to be unlocked.

This brings me to Berlin. More than just another race on the calendar, the Berlin Marathon represents an opportunity unlike any I’ve had before. It will be my second international racing experience, and is a golden opportunity to compete on one of the fastest marathon courses in the world. For the first time, the idea of chasing an Olympic Trials qualifying standard feels tangible rather than theoretical. The road to this point hasn’t been straightforward. Much of the past year has been spent rebuilding from a lingering tendinitis issue that resulted in what felt like one setback after another. Months of physical therapy, cross-training, and gym rehabilitation were incorporated to try and realign after the injury. Now, coming off a strong half marathon training block, the focus shifts toward converting fitness into marathon-specific strength, speed, and durability. The plan is simple: stay healthy, trust the process, and continue stacking consistent weeks. If everything comes together, Berlin could be the race where preparation, opportunity, and performance finally meet.

Name: Christopher Brenk

School: St. Olaf College, Class of 2020

Hometown: Clarendon Hills, Illinois

Current Residence: Laramie, Wyoming

Occupation: Registrar at the University of Wyoming

Current Affiliation: Unaffiliated / Self-Coached

PR: 2:17:34

The wind appears to have never contemplated the possibility of stopping. It batters me and 20 pronghorn far off on the horizon relentlessly - the lot of us running on the high plains outside of town in the early evening light. How I find myself in southeast Wyoming is the result of a few minute decisions that had an enormous butterfly effect, that I can first trace back to a peculiar disease diagnosis in 2020 and many hours holed up at the Mayo Clinic. Snow fell silently outside my patient window that winter, and I remember fixating on that snow while being poked and prodded.

Contrary to what some of my friends misremember, I was not a very good college runner; I never even managed all-conference in the MIAC. Something always seemed off with my body’s ability to push the envelope. But I had the best of friends as teammates and had way too much fun. I didn’t hold particular ambitions for post-collegiate running and I looked forward to becoming a public high school English teacher and coach. And so it suddenly was that as the wind began to kick up the snow outside my window, and the thought of awaiting a pension I may or may not be around to claim grew sillier by the day, a conviction slowly festered for something new, something far away. This defibrillator of curiosity has not coincidentally resulted in my getting a lot faster, as I’ve finally gained some strength under my legs while on the move, as I’ve learned how to navigate symptoms, and as I’ve realized that as much as I desire having a group and teammates again, the motivation to train is intrinsic and can be done alone.

A lot of people have prodded me with something like, “So, OTQ at Berlin?” after I ran 2:17:34 at the Eugene Marathon in April. That was a surprise in its own right. I talk down my own expectations enough when hashing race goals, but it really is impossible to gauge one’s true fitness at this altitude. One reason I have gotten faster is by detaching from certain outcomes. In hyperfixating on a particular pace or time, cortisol spikes with discrepancies good and bad, and the mindset regresses from playing to win to being afraid to lose. (In a previous marathon, I ran the first 18 miles with a fellow whose watch beeped at him if he was 1) ahead of pace, 2) behind pace, and 3) on pace. He dropped out at 22.) I don’t need to think about the exact split to OTQ and focusing on it won’t make me faster. By upping the training ante just another 5-10% like I have the last several marathons, which has had me knock 2-4 minutes off consistently each time, I can perhaps anticipate a similar step on a good day.

I am lucky to be able to still strive for personal bests, feel good at least partly doing so, and move my body every day, which some of us cannot like we used to or wish to anymore. And I have lots of friends and old teammates still getting after it to take inspiration from.

The glory days can be left basked in the rose tinted memories of undergrad, or they can be scratched and clawed and pursued to unknown greater heights with continued diligence. Part of the thrill is then that high risk, the moonshot. September 27 is less than three months away; stay tuned as we divulge our preparation for that big swing.

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—

251 years after the “shot heard round the world” started the Revolutionary War in Concord, Mass., a new shot will ring out through the air on a six-lane, compact, public track in a grass field nestled in what is now a quiet, New England suburbia.

This shot will come from the starting pis

tol that commences the high-performance window of the 15th annual Adrian Martinez Classic, where a new type of minuteman will be born: one that is racing the clock in some of the fastest middle distance track races in the country.

Of these athletes, six D3 standouts will put their fitness to the test; some in the midst of fruitful post-collegiate careers and others looking to turn the taper of a long NCAA season into some post-season magic. Past and present D3 athletes Julian Aske, Trevor Richwine, Christopher Collet, Travis Martin, Emily Richards, and Anna Connor are all ones to watch if you’re rooting for small-school talent, which, chances are if you’re reading this, you are.

Recent Dickinson grad Trevor Richwine headlines the cast of D3 athletes lining up in Concord this Sunday. Fresh off of his third consecutive D3 national title, the mid-distance star now turns his season of 1:47’s to post-collegiate racing, and he is eager to see where he can land in the lineup.

“I’m trying to see if I can dip into the 1:46 range,” Richwine said. “I haven’t had too many really competitive meets this year, so this is a great opportunity for me to run against some of the best.”

The meet record in the men’s 800m is 1:46.03. If the conditions are fast enough, Richwine will even have an opportunity to take a crack at Olympian Nick Symmonds’s all-time D3 best 800m time of 1:45.83, which he ran at the 2006 USATF Championships. Richwine has already proven to be a modern generational talent this year, having taken down Symmonds’s legendary and longstanding national record in the men’s 800m just over a week before nationals. En route to his record-setting performance of 1:47.21 at the Widener Final Qualifier, Richwine beat a handful of senior championship national qualifiers, many of whom he will see on the starting line again on Sunday.

“I’m hoping they push me to a fast time, and then I’ll go from there based on how I do,” Richwine said.

Richwine will not be the only D3 athlete fresh off of NCAAs in the field, either. Keep an eye on NYU’s Julian Aske. Aske put together an impressive 2026 outdoor season after missing much of the cross country and indoor seasons of competition. Despite crossing the line in auto-qualifying position in the D3 national prelim, Aske was unfortunately disqualified for a lane line violation. Taking the post-season start line at Adrian Martinez this weekend is Aske’s opportunity to turn a DQ into motivation, which could even lead to breaking his 800m personal record and No. 25 in D3 history mark of 1:48.98.

Another 800m national record holder also lurks in the mix at this year’s Adrian Martinez. Women’s national record holder and Ohio Northern grad Emily Richards will contest the women’s 1500m alongside Olympians Kate Snowden and Erin Teschuk as well as twice-defending Adrian Martinez 1500m/mile champion Helen Schlachtenhaufen and NCAA D1 800m national champion Lindsey Butler. Richards is fresh off of a 2:01 800m opener at IMG last weekend and will step into her first 1500m race of the year with eyes on a PR-setting, sub-4:10 performance.

The D3 representative in the women’s 800m to watch this year is 2009 George Fox grad Anna Connor. Connor has been a force on the masters stage, capturing both the 800m and 1500m world masters titles in 2024. This year, the year she joined the 40-44 masters age group, Connor ran a season’s best of 2:08.60, which would have placed her in fifth on the D3 national podium a few weekends ago. Connor’s sustained dominance after college shows how D3 roots can grow into long-standing success, and she will put that dominance to the test against other top 800m talent this weekend.

A pair of D3 grads will contest a rare 2-mile race this weekend, including 2024 Wartburg grad Christopher Collet, now of Rhode Island Track Club. Collet is most known for his dominant career in the D3 steeplechase, as well as his epic back-and-forth battles with fellow standout and men’s steeple national record holder Christian Patzka. Though the two traded national titles and national records throughout their college careers, the two D3 standouts are now both forging their own running paths, and Collet hopes his will be marked with a new personal best in a unique distance that he hasn’t raced since high school.

“It’s great to have an opportunity just to race on the track,” Collet said. “It’s harder and harder to find elite meets, especially for the steeple, without going west. This race fits in well as a chance to see the fitness on the track instead of the roads or the steeple. I’m not coming into this with any crazy goals outside of running really hard and pushing to the redline.”

Collet will face Adrian Martinez meet 5k record holder John Reniewicki of Under Armour and USATF nationals 5th place finisher in the 10k James Mwaura of BAA, but there will be a familiar face on the line with him as well. Collet will face off with his former D3 competitor Travis Martin, who garnered four D3 All-American honors in the mid-distances on the track while at Trinity before going on to run at D1 school UConn. Martin greatly improved upon his times while at UConn, closing out the final year of his collegiate career with an impressive UConn 5k school record time of 13:34, a 7:54 3k, and a 3:59 mile. In his first full year running post-collegiately, look for Martin to be right in the mix.

Meets like Adrian Martinez, set at a public track next to a beloved community playground, show that athletes don’t necessarily need state-of-the-art stadiums with flashy electronics and looming grandstands to perform well. All they need is a track and some competition, making this meet the perfect atmosphere for a D3 athlete: low-key and high-passion, the precise environment that molded these athletes into who they are today. The D3 athletes on the start line this weekend have run at the Olympic trials, D1 regionals, world championships, and more, but they did not start in those places. They started on humble high school tracks that turned into unpretentious D3 stadiums with a committed following of passionate fans.

At the Adrian Martinez Classic, these athletes will feel right at home.

—

High performance races will start at Emerson Playground at 6pm Eastern time, and live results can be followed at Speed Sport Timing.

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11 Things We Loved About Nationals

Everyone at their best

One thing I’m always in awe of at the national meets is seeing everyone at their best. In the booth, we try to highlight when athletes PR or set a season’s best. The new graphics make that a lot easier by denoting it in the results. This year, the PBs kept showing up in the

results. It was so frequent that we tallied it up: 238 PBs over the three day weekend. 238! Highlights include: 7/12 women in the 1500m final and 6/9 men in the 400m final. As staunch supporters of D3, it’s so fun to see everyone at their best at the biggest meet of the year. Each year, performances are elevated because of what happens at this meet. To become the best, you need to be at your best.

Schroeder wins at home

In 2024, we saw UWL’s Luke Schroeder give his body for his team. He left Virginia Beach on crutches after being DQ’d in the 60mH. Flash forward to outdoors and he fell over the first hurdle to finish last. He then missed all of 2025 due to injuries. That left a lot of question marks of where Schroeder would be this indoor season. He set the 60mH hurdle record at the WIAC meet but fell short of a national title, finishing fourth. With all the highs and lows, all eyes were on him to see if he could finally win a national title at home–afterall, he set the 110mH record during the regular season and entered nationals as the favorite. As he cleared the seventh hurdle and pulled away from the field, the crowd erupted. His arms stretched out wide, and Luke Schroeder finally was an individual national champion. Things you love to see.

Tassey gets his title

After the DQ heard around the running world, the D3 community rallied around Nathan Tassey. Three steps on the inside rail of the final turn cost Tassey his 10k title. He deployed the same tactics this year of sitting back in the pack and slowly moving up. Unfortunately for him, favorite Isaac vanWestrienen was having a day. Running sub 29 minutes, it made the task tough for Tassey to catch him. On Saturday, Tassey positioned himself towards the front of the pack ensuring he would match every move. With a lap to go, everyone began their kick. Tassey was right there. With 100m to go, he made the decision to go and slipped between lapped runners and vanWestrienen. The gutsy move worked, and he sprinted down the home stretch toward his national title. The best part was everyone congratulating him. His excitement was shared with his competitors. Tassey finally got his.

Last Jump Magic, again

What is happening in the women’s triple jump? Three of the last four competitions have been won by the winner’s last jump! Elysse Cumberland won on her jump at 2025 indoors. Imani Ogrunribido took notes because she’s now won back-to-back outdoor titles on her last jump! How clutch is that? Her 12.83 meter clearance bettered Centre’s Serena McNeilly’s 12.79-meter lead by just four centimeters. What a competition!

Shot Put U

If you think you’ve seen a UW-Eau Claire shot putter on top of the podium for a while, well you’re right. Since 2023 outdoors, a Blugold has stood atop of the podium looking down upon the rest of the country every season except 2024 outdoors! Yakob Ekoue won in 2023 outdoors and 2024 indoors. Adam Strouf swept in 2025, and Gage Stankiewicz swept 2026. That’s SIX national titles in the last seven attempts! It helps when you’re coached by world medalist Roger Steen. Also, watching them celebrate is probably my favorite thing to see. They’re fired up.

La Crosse sweeping at home

Listen, it’s freaking cool both teams came in as favorites and won on their home turf. AND it’s the first time both teams have won at home. So many things have to come together to win a track and field national championship. Think of all the variables, then add in being at home. The coolest part of it was the group picture they took with the fans that stayed for the trophy ceremony. Both programs came together to celebrate as one. Not many host schools are in title contention, so to see both do it was impressive.

Aryianna Garceau’s greatness

Watching Aryianna Garceau this weekend was so impressive. She was unchallenged in both of her hurdle races, and didn’t have any slip ups! She joked on the podcast that she always has a little adversity that she has to deal with but gets it corrected for the finals. This weekend, she was clean over every hurdle and looked unstoppable. On Saturday, you could tell she wanted to destroy her record, and she did just that. She ran 13.28 to break her D3 record and now owns the seven fastest times in D3 history. Her performances are going to be missed. My take is having performances like hers elevate everyone around her and shows D3 has room for elite talent. In fact, we welcome it.

Schoenegge challenged

When someone such as Vassar’s Haley Schoenegge comes into nationals with multiple national titles and a multiple-second lead over the field, it’s very easy for racers to mentally divide the race into two–us and her–sometimes before the race even starts. This, however, was not the case in this year’s women;s 1500-meter final. WashU’s Lucinda Laughlin and Williams’s Kate Tuttle were on a mission to snap Schoenegge’s two-year winning streak and the rest of the field followed suit. The field committed early to a quick pace, crossing through the opening 300-meters on pace for 4:15 or faster. By lap three, only three remained up front: Schoenegge, Laughlin, Tuttle.

Laughlin’s push to overtake Schoenegge was one of the gutsiest performances of the weekend. The pair closed in 65 seconds, battling the entire way to the finish line, with Schoenegge’s kick and veteran ability to win ultimately preserving her now five-strong 1500m/mile winning streak, an increasingly impressive streak with increasingly deeper women’s 1500-meter fields. Schoenegge narrowly missed her PB and led the entire podium to set their own personal bests.

With this win, she earned the sixth national title in Vassar history, her five titles following trailblazer Heather Ingraham, who won the program’s first national title with a 2015 victory in the women’s 400-meter dash.

Postler breaks historical barrier

Though we aren’t in the business of saying who will and will not be an All-American or national champion, it came as no surprise to see No. 1 seed UW-Eau Claire’s Blake Postler win the men’s 400-meter hurdles. What we were absolutely not expecting was to see Postler go out and solo a sub-50 title performance and join ranks with legendary two-time Olympic gold medalist Edwin Moses, the only other D3 athlete to dip under this barrier in history. Postler showcased an impressive weekend of hurdling, finishing third in a loaded men’s 110-meter hurdle field an hour before his dominant 400-meter hurdle performance, which earned him his first hurdle national title.

Trio of champs raise bar

It might be biased to have an ONU alum writing this, but Ohio Northern’s Avery Baker-Schlendering’s victory in the women’s high jump was one of my highlights of the weekend. To see her remain in the competition with two high jump national champions and then eventually become the champion herself was a really special moment. Indoor champion Serena McNeilly of Centre looked as if she would repeat her victory in Birmingham with clean clearances through 1.76 meters, but when Baker-Schlendering cleared 1.79 meters to tie her indoor PR and McNeilly missed all three attempts, only last year’s indoor and outdoor champ Wildsmith had a chance of stealing the victory. Wildsmith had somewhat of a rocky competition, clearing her last four bars on the third attempt, so when she passed her final attempt to 1.82 meters, just a centimeter over her PR, anything was possible. One miss later, and Baker-Schlendering became a first-time national champion and the sixth highest women’s high jumper in D3 history.

Ander Julian is an All American

How cool of a story is Ander Julian? He gets entered into the meet after a medical scratch on Tuesday. And on Thursday he finished eighth to become an All American. This is why you can’t count anybody out. You never know who is going to have a day, that’s why you run the race! On top of becoming an All American, he closed out his career with a personal best of 29:48. He blitzed a 63 final lap! Wartburgggggggg Asssssemblleeeeeeee.

And of course, Christian Patzka

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For the fifth time in history and first time since 2018, the river-carved backdrop of La Crosse, Wisc. will be the setting for the 2026 D3 Outdoor National Championships. Home to the iconic Grandad Bluff and beloved Midwest gas station chain Kwik Trip, you know as soon as you arrive in La Crosse why the university chose the eagle as their mascot. Situated along the banks of the mighty Mississippi, soars of bald eagles circle overhead on thermal currents. Hop in the car and drive just two miles west under their watchful eyes and you’re in Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes. The eagles rule La Crosse.

It just might happen that the Eagles do, too. Projected number one on both the men’s and women’s sides, this could be the first year in history that both programs win outdoor national team titles at home.

UWL men, who have at least one athlete in every event except the javelin, will have to hold off indoor champions Rowan, who return deep squads in the high hurdles and high jump, as well as WIAC rivals Oshkosh and Eau Claire. UWL women will need to outperform the WashU Bears, who know how to deliver at a national meet, as well as coast-to-coast foes Johns Hopkins and CMS.

All this and more comprise the storylines to follow this coming weekend. Two hurdle national record holders go for gold–one has three hurdle titles, and one has zero. The first 4x1 relay team in D3 history to break 39 seconds comes back after a devastating DNF. A rising star in the women’s 800 has the opportunity to repeat Esther Seeland’s incredible freshman outdoor title and perhaps set a new freshman record along the way.

D3 Glory Days hits the highlights in this preview. Look for more of our coverage all week long: in the booth, on our social channels, and trackside with athlete interviews.

Marquee event: Men’s 110m hurdles

The record books in the men’s 110m hurdles are being rewritten. Reflecting a broader surge in D3 track and field, five athletes have combined to produce nine of the top 13 wind-legal performances in history within the last two seasons alone.

Leading that movement is UW–La Crosse’s Luke Schroeder, the record holder in both the indoor 60m hurdles and outdoor 110m hurdles. Despite his historic speed, a national title has remained frustratingly out of reach. Schroeder’s history at national meets has been nothing short of turbulent: consecutive DQs in the indoor hurdles in 2023 and 2024, a crash into the first hurdle during the 2024 outdoor prelims, and a fourth-place finish this past indoor season despite entering as the top seed. This weekend on his home track, a big home crowd will all be rooting for him to finally convert record-breaking performances into championship gold.

While Schroeder owns the two fastest outdoor times in D3 history (and four of the top five all-conditions marks including a blistering 13.20 last weekend with +4.9 wind), he faces a field loaded with proven winners. Standing in his way are four athletes who have already accomplished what he has not: winning an individual national title.

The 2024 outdoor champion, Rowan’s Kwaku Nkrumah, understands as well as anyone how quickly fortunes can change. After capturing his 2024 gold, his title defense ended abruptly with a fall in last year’s prelims and a DNF. He bounced back well this past indoors by finishing runner-up in the 60m hurdles and in April produced a new personal best time that now ranks tied for third all-time. His teammate, Jason Agyemang, has become the definition of championship consistency. He has finished in the top four of hurdle events at each of the last five national meets, won the indoor 60m hurdle title in 2025, and has been outdoor runner-up in each of the last two seasons. He will also contest the 400m hurdles alongside teammate and No. 2 seed Angel Gonzalez. Though Gonzalez faces tough competition from No. 1 seed Blake Postler of Eau Claire, the “Hurdle U” designation to Rowan is well deserved and could prove true again this weekend.

As if Schroeder and Rowan’s duo were not enough to make the 110s a must-watch event, two more national champions enter the picture. Central College’s Gunner Meyer shocked the field at these past indoor championships, entering seeded fourth before pulling off an upset victory. But that race carried its own controversy. Nebraska Wesleyan’s Eli Etherton, the 2023 indoor 60m hurdle champion, actually crossed the line first before being disqualified for drifting into the adjacent lane in the final strides. For Meyer, the question is whether the indoors breakthrough was the start of something bigger; for Etherton, it is whether this weekend can bring closure. With records falling, redemption stories unfolding, and national champions stacked throughout the field, the men’s 110m hurdles could end up being the marquee event of the weekend.

Queens of the Hurdles: Champions defending their thrones

The women’s hurdle events at this year’s D3 national championships are set to feature two dominant champions attempting to each win their fourth national title. In the women’s 100m hurdles, the spotlight falls squarely on UMass Boston’s Aryianna Garceau, who enters the weekend as the undisputed queen of the hurdles. Garceau has swept the last three national hurdle titles, winning back-to-back indoor 60m hurdle crowns before capturing last year’s outdoor 100m hurdle championship. Her 2026 season has reached historic territory, as she now owns five of the fastest performances in D3 history, highlighted by a record-breaking 13.40 this past April.

Meanwhile, the women’s 400m hurdles are headlined by the return of Buffalo State’s Natalia Sawyer, a three-time national champion whose résumé rivals anyone in D3. Sawyer claimed the 2023 and 2024 outdoor 400m hurdle titles, including a blazing 58.01 performance that ranks second all-time in D3 history, and added the 2024 indoor 60m hurdle crown as well. After missing all of last outdoor season, Sawyer has returned to championship form, clocking a 59.76 at the Bison Outdoor Classic in April and proving she remains a threat to add a fourth national title.

While both three-time champions enter the weekend as the names to beat, neither path to gold will come easy.

Garceau will likely face her biggest challenge from Allyson Hammond of Pacific (Ore.). Hammond moved to No. 2 on the D3 all-time list after running 13.60 in March and has spent recent national meets chasing Garceau, finishing runner-up at the last two indoor championships. Following a fifth-place finish outdoors a year ago, she enters this weekend searching for a breakthrough moment and her first national title.

Sawyer, meanwhile, will have to contend with Arielle Chechile, who enters as the top seed with a personal-best 59.05 that ranks tenth all-time in D3 history. Chechile’s recent championship experiences have been defined by heartbreak: a disqualification in last year’s outdoor 400m hurdle final and another DQ this past indoor season in the flat 400m after entering the final with the second-fastest prelim time. Now entering as the top seed, she returns with both redemption and a national title firmly in her sights.

Hagan and Richwine take down historical giants

At all levels, middle distance is having a moment. Two massive national records fell this season in the men’s events, and the women’s races are knocking on the doors of some pretty steep records as well.

Ryan Hagan is one of the biggest names of the year in D3. Having broken the men’s 1500m national record twice (and doing so in a bandana), all eyes are on the SUNY Geneseo Knight in this year’s metric mile.

Hagan’s outdoor campaign has been one of dreams; he’s the only athlete in D3 history to have broken a trifecta of distance barriers: sub-1:50 in the 800m, sub-3:40 in the 1500m, and sub-14 in the 5k. His 3:38.67 and eventual 3:37.19 both surpassed the legendary Karl Paranya of Haverford, who was previously the only other D3 athlete to have dipped under 3:40 in the men’s 1500 in 1997. That same year, Paranya won both the 1500m and 800m titles at La Crosse, both events that Hagan will contest this weekend. History could repeat itself nearly three decades later with a new face in a different jersey.

That is as long as emerging D3 great Trevor Richwine of Dickinson doesn’t do something to stop it. More recent history suggests he will. Not only is the senior the twice-defending 800m national champion, but he rides the momentum of a fresh 1:47.21 800m national record all the way from Carlisle to La Crosse. Last week at the Widener Final Qualifier, Dickinson bumped elbows with U.S. finalists and even World Championship qualifiers to cruise to a second-place finish overall and national record that topples D3 legend Nick Symmonds.

On a similar weekend twenty years ago, Symmonds ran 1:47.34 to set a new D3 record. A month later, he ran 1:45.83 to take second at the US National Championship, becoming one of the pioneers of D3 runners in the pro ranks. Though Symmonds’s time now doesn’t hit the auto-qualifying mark for USAs (like we said, midD is having a moment), he showed what is possible after a career becoming the best D3 800m athlete in history.

This weekend, Richwine will be on a quest to put the cherry on top of a storied season. A fellow D3 national record holder is less intimidating when you’ve lined up against post-collegiates and D1 stars, but should also not be counted out. It’s not often you get to see two D3 record holders run wire-to-wire at the same championships. Could Paranya have beaten Symmonds? We’ll never know; but in the 2026 edition—Richwine versus Hagan–we are in for a treat.

Keep a watchful eye on other national champions in this field: Cael Schoemann of UWL in the 800m and Nicholas Lyndaker in the 1500m. Both know the taste of victory enough to grab another helping. Be sure to also follow freshman sensation Caleb Tenney of Johns Hopkins, whose 3:41.56 is a D3 freshman national record.

Schoenegge and Delia: A tale of two freshman champions

Two years ago in Myrtle Beach, Vassar freshman Haley Schoenegge stunned the whole division when she rocketed to the front of a seasoned women’s 1500m national field and never looked back, running an impressive freshman record time of 4:19.46, nine seconds ahead of the rest of the field. Schoenegge has not lost a national 1500m or mile race since, her D3 title count now up to four. Returning to the field with the top seed by four seconds, it is likely Schoenegge racks up a fifth, but just how fast can the now-junior run?

Five years ago in North Carolina, SUNY Geneseo’s Emily Pomainville did something few athletes would be willing to do: she time trialed the 1500m prelim. The result? A seed nearly twenty seconds ahead of the next finisher and a new national record. No one has come close to touching Pomainville’s gutsy performance since, until Schoenegge.

Earlier this season at the Penn Relays, Schoenegge ran the No. 5 fastest 1500m in history at 4:16.13. She’s expanded her range this year, setting new PRs from 2:10 in the 800 to 16:15 in the 5k, a lethal combination of speed and strength for a miler. Schoenegge’s racing history shows she is not afraid to go for it at nationals. With a full day of rest between the 1500m prelim and the 1500m and 5k finals, could we see another national record-setting women’s 1500m prelim? Regardless of if Schoenegge opts to go for it or “survive and advance” and save her big effort for Saturday, she is the competitor in this field that has the best chance of breaking Pomainville’s five year-old record.

Schoenegge’s story inspires the possibility of another this weekend. Indoors, WashU freshman Kate Delia stole the 800-meter crown from a deep field of upperclassman competitors. She returns outdoors with an impressive No. 10 all-time 2:06.46 division-leading seed. Believe it or not, this is not the freshman record. In 2019, freshman and eventual D3 800-meter great Esther Seeland stormed past fading favorite Phoebe Aguiar for the win. Her 2:05.24 captured the national title by four seconds and set a new freshman record.

Could Delia take down this time this weekend? She will feel the heat of three 2:07 seeds behind her, including WashU teammate Caroline Echols. Known for producing great 800m athletes, the Bears of Saint Louis have had five women in program history run under 2:08 outdoors, including notable No. 3 all-time 800m great Emma Kelley. They have never had a freshman running the times Delia has laid down so far this year. She already has a freshman national title; is a freshman national record next? The rookie is surely destined for a decorated career.

Boulderthon

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Boulderthon has it all. From the 5k to the marathon, there is a race for everyone. Believe you can and you will!

Boulderthon is offering $20 off to our readers for the Half or Marathon. Use code D3GloryDays at checkout.

A new era of short sprints

The reign of Sam Blaskowski and Lauren Jarrett is finally over, and new champions will be crowned in the short sprints on the same track that molded the pair of 100-meter national record holders. Who will rise to meet their fame? Returning champions Lamont Victoria, Sydney Radigan, Rajahn Dixon, and Izzy Peterson will all take the outdoor start lines, but only Radigan comes in as a one-seed favorite. The rest will have to fend off steep competition, especially in the men’s 100-meter and 200-meter dashes, which will each showcase its most competitive field to date this weekend.

Radigan is the sprinter to watch this weekend. She will contest in three events: the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay, where she will serve as anchor. It’s possible and even likely Radigan will return to the Mitten State with three shiny trophies. Ranked first in both the 100m and 200m, she’s No. 4 in D3 history in both events. Her most competitive event is the 100m, where she currently holds a lead 0.16 seconds over No. 2 seed Peterson. Perhaps initially to her surprise, Radigan captured the 60m title indoors, but Peterson got the final say in Birmingham.

In a nailbiting finish, Radigan and Peterson took each other to the line in the indoor 200-meter dash with Peterson finishing on top by two hundredths of a second. D3, you are in for another treat in the single-turn event this weekend–the pair comes into the meet separated by a mere hundredth of a second. Will Peterson defend her indoor title, or will Radigan have the final say of the year?

The men’s races will be exciting simply for the fact that there is no clear favorite. Pfeiffer’s Jordan Jones enters the weekend with the top seed in the 100m with a wind-assisted 10.13, but the top seed under legal winds is none other than Rowan’s Dixon, whose 10.31 is No. 9 in D3 this year. Indoor champion Victoria lurks in the mix with the No. 3 seed, a pair of Eagles in Luke Schroeder and Landon Gallun also sit in the top 8. Davian Willems and Landen Liu come to the field with lots of experience, and Dylan Doss and Kai Smith come in motivated, for good or for bad, by their top-3 finishes indoors. Victoria was one of the last ones into the meet before capturing the 60m victory in March. Do not be surprised to see similar stories on the start line in Saturday’s final, especially with the deepest field in history.

Similarly, the men’s 200m is stacked from top to bottom. The rankings look a lot like the 100m but with Salisbury’s Smith leading the way instead of Jones. Smith caught fire indoors when he placed third in the 60m and fourth in the 200m. Outdoors, he has been on a different level. His 20.56 is No. 4 all time, just a hundredth of a second behind D3 legend JP Vaught. Though Smith will be hard to catch, he’s one of four top-20 all-time marks in the field, including No. 8 Schroeder, No. 9 Doss, and No. 15 AJ Wright.

In the 400m, watch for Andrew Rock product Grant Nelson of Bethel, the defending national champion and significant favorite with his No. 7 all-time 46.06. Only four athletes in D3 history have broken 46 outdoors, including Rock, but it could become five this weekend. Hope’s Sara Schermerhorn will look to repeat her indoor victory in the women’s 400m, after an unfortunate scratch from the meet from No. 1 seed Ariella Rogahn-Press. Plattsburgh State’s Grace Yarkosky returns as the No. 11 seed after her impressive indoor finish where she made Schermerhorn work every inch for the title, taking her to the line.

WIAC Champs 2.0

For three years in a row, UW-La Crosse has won the men’s 4x100m relay at nationals. That streak could snap this weekend, however, and it might just take a national record to do it. Last week, at the UWL Final qualifier at La Crosse, WIAC rivals Oshkosh and La Crosse dropped the No. 1 and No. 2 fastest 4x100m relay times in D3 history. Oshkosh won, becoming the first team in history to dip under 39 seconds. Three times, the Titans have faced the Eagles in this event. Three times they’ve won. Can they do it a fourth time on the largest stage in D3? Can they do it at La Crosse’s house? They’ve already done so twice. Last year, they missed advancing to the finals and will likely do everything in their power to get the stick around the track clean in the prelim. Then on Saturday: fireworks.

Shot put men produce deepest field since 2010

16 years ago it took 16.50m to get into the meet in the men’s shot put. This year, it took 16.69m. A new era of men’s shot put has arrived. Leading the field is Concordia-Moorhead senior Cooper Folkestad. His throw of 19.26m moved him to fourth all-time and just the seventh D3 thrower over 19m. Can he stop the UW-Eau Claire reign in the shot put? Eau Claire hasn’t lost a Shot put title in three straight national meets. When you’re coached by a World medalist, you build champions. In 2024, 16.62m was the last All-American spot. Now, that doesn’t even get you into the meet. No matter who comes out of the weekend on top, men’s shot put will go down in D3 history in its best form yet.

Can anyone challenge Charlotte Frere?

In 2023, Charlotte Frere qualified for the national meet for the first time and placed 17th. Since then, she’s gone on to win two straight discus national titles and set the new D3 record of 56.59m. She took down Kristin Kuehl’s record of 55.02, which was set in 1992. She followed it up with a throw of 55.04m at her final home meet on May 14. Frere owns the top two throws in division history, has won two straight titles, and her lowest finish this year was a 7th place finish at Drake Relays. Frere seems ready to go for a third title as the field is nearly 4.5m behind her. An added bonus is that she’ll only be focusing on the discus as she is not competing in any other throwing event.

One last jump for Rivers

If you can, get to the long jump pit this weekend to witness Josh Rivers’s last national meet in his D3 career. The Oshkosh standout has set a new standard for D3 jumps as he became the first man to jump over eight meters. He did that indoors and outdoors last season. At the WIAC conference meet, he jumped the third farthest jump in D3 history with a 7.94m. He now has three of the four top jumps in history. He had a close call indoors, will he have the same battle outdoors? Davare Payne of Hardin-Simmons caught a +3.7 m/s wind to jump 7.85m. He’s the closest to Rivers on the descending order list. However, his next best jump this season is 7.01m. Rivers might be jumping away with another title here.

What does Centre have in store?

Indoors we saw Serena McNeilly and Chloe Hein jump their way to the podium. They’re back again with extra fire power, this time bringing shot putter Zoey Shadhid-Scott with them. Hein is in the 100m, long jump, and triple jump. McNeilly is in the high jump, long jump and triple jump, which is a lighter load for the field star as she is not taking on the multi. It was so cool to see Hein and McNeilly get on the podium indoors, and they have a shot to do it again. Based on entries, Centre is just 4 points away from getting another team trophy.

Team title earned in the field

La Crosse and Rowan were separated by 1 point indoors. The field athletes could play a big role as La Crosse has 15 entries in the field and Rowan has 10. Rowan has four in both the high jump and long jump. If they could squeeze as many points as possible it could shake things up in the team battle.

Steeple champs seek repeat

Last year’s steeple champions, Joey Sullivan and Sophie Bull, will look to repeat their national title victories in 2026.

With a homefield advantage, Sullivan of UW-La Crosse will have to hold off Lance Sobaski of Wartburg in the men’s race. Sobaski started out the season hot at the Wash U Distance Carnival with a personal record of 8:40.85, which is No. 3 all-time in D3 history. Sullivan followed suit weeks later at the WIAC Championships hosted by UW-La Crosse where he ran 8:41.53. Both have loads of national championship experience and the ability to break the championship record of 8:42 set in 2023.

This seems like a race of two clear favorites, but don’t leave out Central College’s Jack Brown, who ran 8:49.10 at the Bryan Clay Invitational. Brown captured a tactically raced national title this indoor season in the mile and looks to have one of the best kicks in the field.

Historically, the last few steeplechase titles and All-American spots have been won within the last two laps, which means with Sullivan and Sobaski’s national experience, along with Brown’s tactically charged kick, we could see quite the last 1000 meters from the field.

2026 might be the year of the Bull. Sophie Bull, that is. The Calvin veteran already has two national titles, including one from this year in the indoor 3k. With her prowess improving on and off the barriers, she could be the first back-to-back national champion in this event on the women’s side since Annie Rodenfels in 2018 and 2019. Bull has a great chance to set the championship record if she decides to run away with the title. Her PR is 10:07.18. The meet record is 10:07.07 set by Evie Miller of Trine back in 2022.

While Bull might be the favorite, Central College’s Peyton Steffen is not far behind. Steffen, who has a wealth of All-American honors, ran 10:17.90 at the Bryan Clay Invitational and is only ten seconds behind Bull on paper. A dark horse is Widener senior Gabriella Nye, who ran 10:19 at Penn Relays. What Nye might lack in national experience in the steeplechase, as this is her first time, she makes up for in talent as she has been on the national stage in the mile and 5k.

Marsyla vs. the world: Will history repeat itself?

CMS’s Elle Marsyla looks to continue the Athena legacy under the bluffs of La Crosse this Saturday. Marsyla not only has the fastest time in D3 this year, but she has the potential to repeat CMS history. The last time that UW-La Crosse hosted the national meet, Bryn McKillop of CMS won the 5k title in 16:36.

Led by Marsyla’s time of 16:13, this year has the potential to be the greatest women’s 5k in D3 history. It is already the deepest that the field has ever been. To qualify in 2025, it took 16:45, yet the last time in this year was 16:41. To quantify how insanely talented and deep this field is, 16:42 was the last all-American in 2025.

Haley Schoenegge of Vassar, Ainara Sainz de Rozas of Concordia University of Wisconsin–who returns with a vengeance after being sidelined indoors and much of cross country– and Kate Tuttle of Williams all have run 16:20 or under and will all contest in this last distance event of the weekend after running in other events. An event often run on fumes, watch for others doubling back like steeplechasers Sophie Bull and Peyton Steffen, miler Grace McDonough of Connecticut College; and 10ker Claire Anderson of Washington & Jefferson. A new champion will be crowned in this event this year, so anything goes.

vanWestrienen leads the distance double

There is no field like that of the men’s 5k; it is a wild bunch of senior veterans, freshmen who race like veterans, and all those in between. Cornell College’s Isaac vanWestrienen leads the way with a 13:53. Along with his leading mark in the 10k of 28:52, he is going in with a massive target on his back, which we are certain he enjoys. Those throwing darts at it will likely be UW-La Crosse’s Aidan Matthai, freshman 5k national record holder Theo Udelson-Nee of NYU, and Wartburg’s Isaiah Hammerand–all of whom have broken 14 minutes–as well as cross country champion Emmanuel Leblond and Loras’s Isaac Bourne, who will do his first distance double.

Matthai will look to do the same as many other La Crosse athletes, and that is to win at home. He’s entered in both the 10k and 5k and is no stranger to being at the top of the pack, if not leading it, as he runs headstrong and fearless.

Farther down the descending order list this year lies a sleeping giant in Chasen Hunt of Lynchburg, who holds the outdoor record of 13:41 set in 2025. Hunt should not be left out of contention as he is one of the few at the top who is not doubling back in the 10k.

The men’s distance titles remain wide open this weekend, especially after a surprising last-minute scratch from returning indoor distance double champion Rowan’s Seth Clevenger. After having a quieter season than he did indoors–Clevenger broke the 5k and 3k records en route to two national titles–he was qualified for outdoors, but has medically scratched from the meet according to Coach Dimit.

Tassey looks for 10k redemption

One of the most dramatic and heartbreaking scenes from the 2025 outdoor champs was the disqualification of Roger Williams’s Nathan Tassey. Tassey has been a prominent figure the last few years and captured his first national title in last year’s 10k. Unfortunately, and to the crowd’s dismay, Tassey was disqualified for a lane violation in the last 150m of his race. This has lit a fire under him that will certainly burn for all twenty five laps. For reference, Tassey was seeded fifth last year and won, while this year he is seeded tenth. Fresh off of a 14:04 5k PR, he is sharp and ready to make it for real this year.

Whether you’re watching live in La Crosse or tuning into the broadcast, this year’s championships are abundant with storylines. From the track to the pit to the mat to the ring to the runway, athletes in all events are bringing their best to D3’s powerhouse nestled along the Mississippi. Like the current, their performances are sure to move you.

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The middle of April has been a bustling time for the D3 community–D3 Glory Days successfully hosted our first Boston shakeout run, where over 40 D3 alums came together ahead of the 130th Boston Marathon. Our co-founder, Stu, bonked his way to a 2:54:11 and continues to boast that he is the only person on staff to have run Boston. And while those of us living our glory days were in the streets tapering for 26.2, current D3 athletes were setting records galore. So far this season, two national records have fallen in the men’s 1500m and women’s 100m hurdles, NYU’s Theo Udelson-Nee set a new freshman record in the men’s 5k, and Central College’s Kale Hobart set an all-conditions best in the decathlon across a blustery few days in Iowa. Here’s what’s happened in D3 so far this spring season.

Boston

The Boston Marathon is known for its electric crowds and iconic landmarks, but this year’s iteration was particularly special for racers for its rare and historic tailwind. Maybe it was the push from behind, or the roar from the crowd, or the advancements in training, shoe, and fueling technology, but this year’s Boston Marathon was fast. John Korir won in a new 2:01:52 course record, and the women’s field, led by Sharon Lokedi, had the deepest top-10 in history.

The D3 community was out in throngs, accomplishing everything from top-40 finishes, OTQs, and PRs to bucket-list checkoffs and making unforgettable memories with D3 friends. The top D3 finishers on both sides finished 37th overall: Johns Hopkins alum Insa Mannstadt led the way on the women’s side in 2:37:34, and St. Scholastica alum Lars Dewall finished in 2:12:30 in the men’s race.

Below, hear from a collection of this year’s D3 finishers on their experience running the 130th Boston Marathon.

“We are both physical therapists now and ran the race together as a celebration of graduating 10 years ago. I’ve run Boston three times, and two of those times I have been able to run alongside college teammates which made the experience once in a lifetime.”

-Brooklyn Swantek, Nebraska Wesleyan University ‘16

“I’m a first time Boston Marathoner and the best I can describe Boston is an enjoyable challenge. The course is easy and fun–the first part is for you to enjoy it, and then it gets tough and that’s where you have to show the distance what you’re capable of. The race is so legendary; to be able to qualify and run on a course that women were restricted from for decades and be among the fastest women’s field they ever saw was awesome.”.

-Abby Fouts, UW-River Falls ‘17

“This was my first Boston and I had put a lot of work into this training block and came away with a 9-minute PR! From start to finish, I had the biggest smile on my face (even through the hills! I was so excited to see what they were all about!). It was truly incredible to see a course I had heard so much about throughout my running career come to life. There were times I wished the race wouldn’t end. The experience was amazing. It left me so proud of how far I’ve come in my running and excited for what’s next! I am humbled to have experienced it. This is definitely a race experience I will never forget.”

-Christina Sakowski, Oswego State ‘13

“It was my first time racing at Boston & the crowd was electric! We couldn’t have asked for better weather or better fans. Truly a special race. Personally, I PRed and felt SO GOOD, but just missed breaking 3 hours. Still a win in my book.”

-Carina Collet, Wartburg ‘21

“First time running Boston and PR’ed by 12 mins from 2:42:12 (NYC) I nearly ran the perfect race till the last two miles. Put yourself out there and give yourself a fighting chance; you can run the time you worked for!”

-Humberto Wallace, Brockport State ‘21

“My race went super well! 2:25:12 - lots of fun all around. Crazy crowds and energy for the entire duration of the race.”

-Reuben Kosche, St. Olaf ‘22

“I actually ran into a good friend of mine, Caleb Billings, who ran at Adrian College, another Division 3 school in my conference and in my region, during my time as an athlete at Albion for undergrad and Calvin for grad school, in the middle of the race! We got to race with each other and work with one another for some of the miles throughout the marathon. It felt just like old times! He is pictured with me, in the zigzag jersey.

I’ll try to be back for another year to run Boston again in the future, but for now, the Chicago marathon is my focus, and punching my ticket to the New York marathon is the goal. With a productive build, staying healthy, and hopefully great weather, I can hopefully earn that qualifying time!”

-Jayden VanMaurick, Albion ‘22/Calvin ‘23

“I went out aggressive for a 2:27 marathon and paid dearly. Heartbreak hill still owns me.”

-Jeffrey Denny, Ohio Northern University ‘14

Current D3 national records fall

If you thought the indoor season saw a lot of shifts in the history books, the outdoor season is on pace to be just as historical. So far this season, athletes have set 24 men’s and 12 women’s top-10 all-time marks, with an additional four men’s and one women’s top-10 all-conditions best marks. 77 top-20 all-time marks hit the books—32 women’s marks and 45 men’s marks. April was a particularly memorable month for D3 record setters Aryianna Garceau of UMass Boston, Ryan Hagan of SUNY Geneseo, and NYU’s Theo Udelson-Nee.

Garceau and Hagan were the talk of the weekend after each set new national records at Conn College and Bucknell, respectively, less than two weeks into the month. Garceau’s wind-legal 13.40 lowered her previous national record of 13.54 by over a tenth of a second. Garceau has been highly consistent this year, kicking off the month with a windy 13.38, running 13.40 ten days later, and replicating her sub-13.50 performance again a week later with a 13.45.

Though it seems the three-time hurdle national champion cannot be caught, Garceau leads a deep women’s 100-meter hurdle field. Pacific’s Ally Hammond ran the No. 2 wind-legal time in D3 history with a 13.60, and Ithaca’s Rachel Larsen has also landed in the top 10 in history with a 13.76. These three athletes will all clash at nationals in just one month, so don’t be surprised if the women’s hurdle history book isn’t quite done with its 2026 makeover.

Hagan made history as the first athlete in history to dip under 3:40 in the men’s 1500 meters in-season and the second to do so all-time. Haverford’s Karl Paranya ran 3:39.84 after the NCAA regular season in July 1997. His 3:38.67 is the 22nd fastest time in the NCAA right now and is faster than all of D2. He currently holds a six-second lead in this event over indoor mile champion Jack Brown, whose 3:44.46 is No. 19 in D3 history.

The men’s 5k history book has been completely renovated in the past three years. 20 out of 26 sub-14 all-time marks outdoors have occurred since 2023, making sub-14 a new D3 standard that was once a rare occurrence. However, D3 has never seen a freshman run such times until NYU’s Theo Udelson-Nee. The 31st place XC All-American and third place indoor 5k All-American dropped a speedy 13:56.49 to set a new D3 freshman national record and become the first true freshman in D3 history to dip under the 14-minute barrier.

Udelson-Nee joins a deep list of names on this year’s descending order list. So far, five athletes including Udelson-Nee have dipped under 14 minutes, led by Cornell College’s Isaac vanWestrienen’s time of 13:53.13 from the end of March. Fellow freshman 5k podium finisher Anthony Clark of Johns Hopkins was an unfortunate DNF at the Virginia Challenge two weekends ago and does not have any marks on the board yet this season.

Windy would-be’s

In the outdoor track and field world, wind readings exist to regulate records, and sure, the wind aids performance in many cases, but sometimes it’s hard to differentiate an athlete’s best performance as “because of the wind” or simply “in the wind.”

Such was the case for UWL hurdle star Luke Schroeder, who is spattering his name into the D3 history books like a painter flicking paint onto a canvas– the droplets are landing everywhere. His 10.35 in the 100-meter dash is No. 11 all-time, and he’s No. 8 all-time in the 200-meter dash with a 20.78. This past weekend at the Drake Relays, Schroeder ran a wind-aided all-conditions No. 2 mark of 13.58 (+2.4) in the 110m hurdles, just 0.02 off of what would have been Rowan’s Jamir Brown’s national record in legal wind. In the final, Schroeder went on to run 13.68 against a 2.0 m/s headwind, the No. 2 best wind-legal hurdle time in D3 history. The wind in Iowa decided to throw all scenarios at Schroeder, and the result was nearly a national record.

Similarly to the women’s high hurdle field, the men’s high hurdle field is currently one of the deepest events in D3. Rowan duo Jason Agyemang and Kwaku Nkrumah ran matching No. 3 all-time marks of 13.72 at their mid-month home meet (Agyemang in the prelim and Nkrumah in the final). Not far behind, indoor hurdle champion Gunner Meyer of Central sits at No. 6 all-time in 13.79. Nebraska Wesleyan’s Eli Etherton and Eau Claire’s Blake Postler are currently No. 15 and No. 16 all-time, respectively, with their times of 13.94 and 13.99. Etherton was the first to cross the finish line in the indoor final but was issued an unfortunate DQ. All of the aforementioned athletes have a national hurdle title except for Schroeder and Postler. With Postler’s No. 6 all-time mark in the 400-meter hurdles and Schroeder’s No. 2 all-time 13.68 into a headwind, the hurdle spotlight may finally turn to the WIAC.

Speaking of the previously mentioned wind in Iowa, are people in Pella okay? Central College hosted the Dutch Spring Multi, where Central athlete Kale Hobart set PRs in four events to score an all-conditions best 7580 points in the decathlon. The reason this mark isn’t an outright national record is because Hobart’s long jump and 100-meter dash were assisted by wind readings of 6.1 m/s and 8.1 m/s, respectively. Though one of the higher wind readings to exist in the D3 record books, 8.1 m/s equates to about 18 mph, which the National Weather Service classifies as a “moderate breeze.” Still, despite the unfortunate coincidence of gusts during this performance, Hobart shows that he is rounding into form in the outdoor ten-event multi after finishing runner-up indoors to Jacob Balcome in the heptathlon.

As we head into May, the winds die down and the sun comes out, and before we know it, another championship will be upon us. The collegiate outdoor season is short, but it’s shaping up to be one of the most competitive yet.

D3 alumni news

• UWL alum and sprints star Sam Blaskowski has gone international! In an African tour that spanned three races in three countries across four days, the 100-meter national record holder ran 10.21 in Kenya, 10.11 in Botswana, and 10.15 in South Africa.

• Meanwhile, back in the states, Ramapo sprints alum Cheickna Traore raced at the National Training Center in Clermont, dropping a quick 10.16 in the 100-meter dash.

• While we are on the topic of men’s D3 sprinting greats, Centre alum JP Vaught is getting married!

• Former UWL sprinting standout Lauren Jarrett, now at Tennessee, ran two quick new PRs in the 100m and 200m dash at 11.06 and 23.39, respectively. Her 11.06 is No. 12 in D1.

• Former Puget Sound athlete Alexander Rhodes, now at Washington, dipped under 45 seconds in the 400m for the first time at Mt. SAC, running 44.94. He’s ranked No. 5 in D1 with this time.

• On the same weekend at Bryan Clay, Lynchburg graduate Tor Hotung-Davidsen, now at NAU, pulled off an impressive double, running 3:37.28 in the 1500m and a jaw-dropping 1:45.36 in the 800m. He currently ranks No. 8 in the 800m and No. 12 in the 1500m in D1 this season.

Are you looking for your next race? You hear Noah talk about how much he loves running in Boulder and now’s your chance to see why he loves it so much. Boulderthon is Boulder, CO’s signature downtown marathon series taking place on September 27, 2026!

Boulderthon has it all. From the 5k to the marathon, there is a race for everyone. Believe you can and you will!

Boulderthon is offering $20 off to our readers for the Half or Marathon. Use code D3GloryDays at checkout!

Esther Atkins (née Erb) will run the 130th Boston Marathon on her 40th birthday. She’s had it on her radar for about five years, and now that the day is almost here, she’s not sure what to expect.

“This could be the beginning, could be the end, who knows?” Atkins said. “I see this as a starting-over point.”

The 2008 Case Western graduate first hit her stride in running while in college. Atkins garnered six All-American honors, including a national title in the 10,000 meters, during her D3 tenure before going on to spend two years as a Fulbright in Europe, where she soft-launched her career in the marathon. She signed up for the Berlin Marathon while still a senior at CWRU and debuted in 2:46 to place 14th overall.

After two more marathons abroad–Vienna, which she described as her slowest marathon she’s ever run after battling severe dehydration, and Seville, where she bounced back to run a new PR of 2:39:49–Atkins returned to the U.S. and joined ZAP Endurance, who she represented in the 2012 Olympic Trials.

“I figured out that I was definitely better at the marathon than anything else pretty quickly,” Atkins said.

She would prove this strength again and again, going on to win the 2014 USA Marathon Championships in Minneapolis–St. Paul, and finish 24th at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing and 11th at the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials.

There seemed to be no stopping her. Fifteen years of healthy, high-level running was helping her win races around the country–New York, Jacksonville, South Carolina–but eventually, she started to slow down.

“It was probably some endocrine system shut down, like adrenal fatigue,” Atkins reflected. “It was not an injury per se at that point, but I was just getting slower. My response to it was not the greatest. I tried to train for ultras and didn’t know what I was doing, so I just put in a ton of miles. Eventually, after a week where I put in a 20-miler and a 32-miler, I had one bad step going down a hill and felt a perforated rip of everything in my right glute, hamstring attachment.”

Atkins called this moment the beginning of the end. As many runners often do, she ignored the injury and continued to train because she could and was used to injuries fading, but the trauma from the injury, both physical and mental, remained.

“I developed a hitch, I developed a fear of falling,” Atkins said. “It’s been a long journey to try to figure it out. The fear-of-falling thing is still an issue. I wish I could zap it away from my brain, but it does keep me from going fast and especially from changing gears.”

As a result, Atkins shut down the season ahead of the 2020 Olympic Trials. She instead turned to other aspects of life, and found adversity in these avenues, too. She had two miscarriages before her and her husband’s first child was born in August 2021. She got Achilles surgery from Haglund’s deformity in her right foot when she realized she couldn’t play with her son without pain. She had a second baby after a third miscarriage and then developed a kidney disease.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, she tried to train, but her hamstring gave out again.

“I remember the day I sat on the curb and cried,” Atkins said. “I haven’t really cared much about running since.”

It’s not so much that Atkins doesn’t care; it’s that running looks different for her these days.

“I hold very loosely to everything at this point,” Atkins explained. “I may or may not be able to do my long run this week. I might not be able to show up to a race because my kid gets sick. Running is not the top priority.”

However, it is still a priority. When she found that her kidney disease benefitted from running because the activity helped with swelling, she gave herself permission to start logging miles again. She signed up for a race in Richmond without expectation. She applied the ideals she’s learned from over a decade-long career in coaching to coaching herself, and, somewhat to her surprise, it worked.

“I looked at the data objectively and said, ‘okay, this is what you can do.’” Atkins said. “Whereas in the past, I’d always known what I was capable of and it had skewed how I looked at myself. Especially since the fear of falling is still a problem, I have to live in this very zen, no-pressure, just-here-to-have-fun way and see how far I can go.”

After “falling apart” ahead of CIM last year, Atkins signed up for three marathons and put no pressure on herself to do any of them. She ended up running Myrtle Beach in 2:52, pacing the McKirdy Micro in just over 3:00, and will now line up for Boston.

Running now looks like waking up early to meet with Greenville, S.C.-based training group WR@D, or We Run at Dawn, who does exactly what their name suggests. On Strava, they post 5:15 a.m. workouts and weekly sunrise averages. Atkins joined the group last May and, as a coach for McKirdy Trained, quickly saw places where the group needed more structure.

She offered her advice on pacing, rest time, injury prevention, and more, and is now looked at by some members of the group as a trusted coaching figure. She even works one-on-one with some members through her coaching with McKirdy. Atkins acknowledges that coaching has also helped her in her own running.

“When I remind my athletes of all the extra stuff they should be doing, I also am reminding myself that I need to be doing it,” Atkins said. “Every time I give advice that is helping somebody to navigate a tricky situation, I have to check myself: do I have any little nagging injuries that I’m ignoring or did I actually take time off? Am I doing all the things that I tell other people to do?’”

In a sentiment that mirrored Diljeet Taylor trying bicarb, Atkins said her main purpose for running now is to empathize with her athletes.

“The reason why I still want to do workouts and show up for races is that it’s important for me to know what it feels like for my athletes,” Atkins said. “As long as I’m able to still do that, I would like to continue to do it so that I can try out new workouts, remember what it feels like to be on a starting line, and know what the latest fueling guidelines feel like because it is totally different from how it was 12 years ago.”

On Monday, Atkins will join eight of her athletes in running the legendary Boston Marathon in a true test of the human spirit. This test is not necessarily seeing what the body can do; it’s seeing what the soul can do in the face of a heartbreak that can only come from knowing peak success and redefining that success in the aftermath of adversity.

“The greatest lesson that running has offered me is the ability to practice getting old,” Atkins said. “There are going to be things that all of us can’t do as well anymore. And we have to still find joy in those things. A lot of people just retire when they’re not going to be as fast as they once were or they keep beating themselves up thinking that there’s another PR in there.

They know they don’t have the time or ability to actually chase it and they just still feel like they’re falling short all the time. My situation has allowed me to figure out how I can have fun doing this thing that is never gonna look like it once did and that was so fulfilling in that form at some point in my life.

How can it be fulfilling now in a different way?”

She cited Dot McMahan and Roberta Groner as role models showing her what’s possible as she forges ahead into her forties, which will kick off with the Boston Marathon.

Atkins’s marathon PR of 2:33:15 is from Boston in 2014. In 2017, she ran Boston again in 2:36:11. 2026 will be the first year she finds herself in the masses instead of alone out front, and her goals are much different, but Atkins still lights up when talking about them.

“I think I could probably break 2:50,” Atkins said. “I don’t know by how much, but that would be a good day. An outstanding day would be running the time that I ran my debut in, which was 2:46:15.”

A beat later, more goals poured out of her.

“I want to run negative or even splits,” she said. “I think that would be really good. I’d love to be the first masters woman from the masses. I don’t know how competitive that is. I should probably look that up.”

Atkins might not know it, but her fire is still there. This could be the end; it could be the beginning. Sometimes the fall is meant to teach how to get back up.

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Boulderthon has it all. From the 5k to the marathon, there is a race for everyone. Believe you can and you will!

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—--

The Boston Marathon is a brutal endeavor. An insidious elevation profile, mercurial temperatures year to year, and a colossal likelihood of blowing up from these elements and more, will often catapult an athlete farther into the pain cave than they’ve ever known. For many, it’s a monumental achievement to make it to the start line at all and a one-and-done experience of a lifetime. Others cross the finish line and immediately know they’ll crawl back.

Josh Derrick (MIT 2020) is one of those latter specimens. He crossed the line on Boylston Street one year ago in 2:48, and knew that just wouldn’t work. “I came into my first Boston (last year) in pretty bad shape. I had to axe my sub 2:30 attempt at Chicago at the end of 2024 because of COVID and a hip tweak. I was still getting back into shape when I got injured again by racing too much too early. I adopted an aggressive cross training mentality, but still didn’t feel ready to race. Until the day of, I was planning to fun run a 3:30, but my friends bullied me into at least re-qualifying. The race started fast, but I quickly settled into 6:20 pace. I remember being distinctly unimpressed with the famous Heartbreak Hill, but was pretty tired by then and the rest of the course was super hard. I ended up running a 2:48, which I was very happy with given the lack of running.”

In the early morning in Baltimore this winter and spring, Josh can usually be found strutting around the city…. somewhere, quite a ways out there. “A big part of this build for me has been the Strava add-on Wandrer.earth, which keeps track of what roads you’ve done at least one time. In an effort to increase my easy mileage and to get to know parts of this city that are less well known, I’ve made it my goal to run at least 33% of the roads in Baltimore city before the end of the year. This means lots of exploring, 8+ minute miles, relearning geography and navigational skills.”

After a solidly impactful D3 running career and an MIT-enlightened cranium, Josh decided he hadn’t had nearly enough school and pivoted his time and energy to a Ph.D in CMDB (Cell, Molecular, Developmental Biology, and Biophysics) at Johns Hopkins University. Under the pseudonym ATiredVegan, he’s also developed PeakClimber, a software for deconvolving HPLC (High-Performance Liquid Chromatography) peaks in laboratories. Sounds neat - and time-encompassing - but unexpectedly, the rigors of a terminal degree can sometimes be fortuitously malleable with other pursuits. “I’m about a year out from finishing. I actually ran with the (Johns Hopkins) team for a year in 2020-21, which was really fun but very difficult to fit into my schedule. The PhD is very flexible, which means that I can do a swim in the middle of the day, or arrive at 10-10:30 after a hard morning workout, and I have plenty of time to train. Being a biologist, I’m also working quite a bit with my hands, which keeps me active and moving throughout the day, which has been a huge plus. There’s no way I’d be able to fit in the training load that I’m doing right now if my job wasn’t so flexible.”

Boston will feature 30,000 runners subscribed to every training habit and philosophy under the sun. Josh sagely avoids the marathoner’s pitfall of neglecting every other possible way to be physically active besides pavement pounding, and possesses what could be described as a healthy training mix of everything and with everyone. “I run about 50% of my runs solo, one day a week with a very casual run club, and the long run/workout days with 2-3 other guys (Jeff Basting, Ross Pedersen, Adam Willis). I’m also on a master’s swim team, and will occasionally do group rides up to northern Maryland on the weekends instead of long runs.”

All the same, training looks a little different this time around. “This year specifically I’m excited to see how my new approach to training will pay off. I was working with a coach for most of 2024 and 2025, which didn’t really work out for me for a number of reasons including differing training philosophies and lack of control over my own schedule. Late last year I got really into the coaching advice of long-distance triathletes Gordo Byrn and Alan Couzins, who emphasize easy volume over everything else. My primary goal this cycle has been to hit 10.5-12 hours of training every week (with down weeks around 9 hours). I’m not ready yet to do all of this running, so only about 50-60% of my total time is spent running; the rest is swimming, cycling, or dancing. I’ve been working with my high school friend Zack Schreier (Williams 2020) on a tempo-focused workout plan, but 90% of my total volume is still below 75% of my max heart rate. The main focus this year is on Chicago, where I’d like to run sub 2:30, which will entail even more training hours over the summer, but I’m excited by how well this volume game seems to be working. My tempo sessions are as fast as they were in 2023, and I feel amazing every day at work and in life outside of training. Boston will be an exciting benchmark to see if this also translates to racing success.”

There is truly no cooler race to test one’s limits than Boston. The crowd, deafening; the electricity, contagious; the carnage, humbling. Josh calls the race “infectious,” and, with good weather (the 14 day forecast never quite ends up accurate….), is aiming to run a PR. While healthy competition and chasing personal bests still clearly entice him, where Josh stands out as a continual role model is in his ability to recognize the other benefits that running Boston entails. Life piles on responsibilities in a way that can be indiscernible in the moment. One can be right in the skinny of their career and catch themselves reminiscing on the glory days – and then suddenly, realize the number of years that have passed since seeing friends from that era. Personal bests and healthy competition are steadfast components of continuing to train as a solid athlete, but camaraderie compels Josh to come back to Boston just as equally. “There’s so many Whys behind Boston for me. One of the big ones is always the MIT alum/D3 running community. There’s a big group of guys from MITXCTF that do this race every single year (Rory Beyer ’17, David Walter ’18, Alex Knoedler ’18) and a big part of why I do this race is to spend time with them, as well as other D3 friends (Dylan Jones, Tufts ’19 above all).”

—--

Josh Derrick is running the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 20th. He’d “like to PR (which would mean sub 2:35) and to actually race, which I haven’t really done since 2023 due to a series of injuries and illnesses. My training buddy here in Baltimore, Adam Willis, is gunning for the same time so I’m hoping we can run together the whole way.”

Are you looking for your next race? You hear Noah talk about how much he loves running in Boulder and now’s your chance to see why he loves it so much. Boulderthon is Boulder, CO’s signature downtown marathon series taking place on September 27, 2026!

Boulderthon has it all. From the 5k to the marathon, there is a race for everyone. Believe you can and you will!

Boulderthon is offering $20 off to our readers for the Half or Marathon. Use code D3GloryDays at checkout!

Jeffrey Denny and his brother, Brian, have run more miles together than many D3 runners will run in their entire collegiate careers.

“We tried to do the math one time,” Denny said. “It’s somewhere between 10 and 20,000 at this point.”

On Marathon Monday, the date of the 130th iteration of the renowned Boston Marathon, the Denny brothers – or “Team Denny” as they’ve been called ever since their dad made matching shirts for an ALS walk for his grandpa naming them such – will line up for their sixth marathon and their second Boston Marathon together.

Denny explained that running with his brother makes it easier to get out of bed in the morning, a task that looms even greater on the dark and dreary days marking winters just outside of Indianapolis, where the two of them train. Even when they’re not running together, Brian is there. When Denny was in the final mile of a low-key tune-up half marathon in Carmel, Ind. a few weekends ago, there was Brian in 35-degree weather with a double stroller for his kids yelling to Denny, “Drive, drive! Get up the hill and finish!”

The miles they share carry a torch that was lit generations before they were even born. Their great grandfather was a runner with a 30-years-lasting memorial run called the Denny Memorial named after him. Their grandfather, who started the memorial run, was a runner. Their father, David Denny, was a runner and 4:01 miler in the early 80’s. Naturally, Brian and Jeffrey became runners, too.

Though they grew up immersed in running, making annual appearances to watch their dad run the Cincinnati Flying Pig, one particular memory has stuck with Denny for 25 years. The family all traveled to Boston together to watch his father run the 2001 Boston Marathon.

“I still remember to this day, we stayed at the Embassy Suites on the corner of Boylston, and the New York Yankees were in our hotel, so I got to meet some of the Yankees,” Denny recollected. “I got to see [my dad] finish and thought that was really cool.”

A few years later, Brian started running cross country, and Denny, a soccer player at the time, eventually traded cleats for spikes when he too found his passion on the cross country course. He dropped his 5k PR a full two and a half minutes from his sophomore to his senior year while running for Colerain High School in Cincinnati where he grew up.

Both brothers went on to run in college. Brian followed in their father’s footsteps and ran for University of Evansville, while Jeffrey, the younger of the two, decided to walk onto the team at Miami of Ohio. He soon realized the training program at Miami was not the right fit and ended up at D3 Ohio Northern per a suggestion from his high school coach, Mark Bierkan, who was an ONU alum and had run for Head Coach Jason Maus.

“Jeffrey was a fantastic teammate during his time at ONU,” Maus said. “He wasn’t afraid to put in the work, and he was really committed to the team and the sport. Oftentimes, he was more excited about his teammates’ success than he was his own.”

Celebrating others came naturally to Denny, and, as expected, he made lasting friendships and memories while at ONU as a result. He likened his running relationship with his college teammates to that with his brother.

“When you’ve run so many miles with someone, like with teammates at Ohio Northern, you know everything about them and you want to see them do well just as much as they want you to do well,” Denny said.

When Denny graduated from ONU in 2014, Brian signed him up for the Chicago Marathon as a graduation gift, and the Team Denny marathon saga began. Chicago was their first marathon together. Off of collegiate 10k training and just a sprinkle of beginner’s luck, Denny ran 2:29:27 with negative splits and realized he just might have some potential at this distance.

In the years following this performance, bouts with injury and burnout kept him far away from personal bests, and he was ready to end his post-collegiate running career with one final bucket-list race: the Boston Marathon. It was 2019, and after that race, Denny would never be the same.

“I fell in love with everything about the Boston Marathon, and it rejuvenated my spirit to keep running,” Denny said. Now, Denny is training for his fourth Boston Marathon.

He describes it as “the Superbowl of running” and recognizes that it will be particularly special this year because of who will be there with him: his college teammate, Cully Gordon, who will race after he watched Denny run his last Boston in 2024 and caught the marathon bug as a result; his brother’s wife, who ran Boston with Denny in 2019 and was the only one who missed the trip in 2021 after the birth of their first child; his fiancée Sayeh, who will watch Denny run a marathon for the first time; his mom and dad, who inspired Denny for the first time 25 years ago with a trip to Boston when his dad ran the race; and of course, his brother, Brian.

“I don’t know how many siblings can say they can line up with their brother at the starting line,” Denny said. “I push him, and he pushes me. He’s always been my biggest cheerleader.”

Though Denny’s cheer section will be loud this year, some cheerleading voices around Heartbreak Hill will not come from the crowd but from Denny’s mind as he remembers the generations of Denny runners that came before him.

He smiled when he remembered weekends when he was still in college. Sundays were long run days but also the day for Denny family lunches, and the two weren’t mutually exclusive. Denny and Brian would walk into the door, and typical family greetings were replaced with questions about the morning’s long run. “How many miles are you on this week?” Someone would ask. “18 miles,” Denny would reply. At the answer, Denny’s grandma would scold them for running too far and joke that the brothers were trying to be faster than their dad.

Their grandparents’ house even sometimes served as the designated 12-mile aid station on their 20-mile route around Cincinnati after a phone call the previous night prompted Gatorade out front at the coordinated stopping time.

Both grandparents have passed since those days, but Denny is left with an appreciation for how his whole family has always supported his running.

“When you have a bad race, people will be like, ‘well that’s faster than I could ever run a half marathon or marathon,’ and while that’s true, I’ve been getting up at 5 a.m. every day to run 10 miles or more for the last six months and that’s not what I was trying to do,” Denny said.

“Luckily, the family knew. If we did have a bad race and the next day go over there for lunch, I’d be like, ‘okay, yes guys, I ran poorly yesterday.’ We don’t have to tiptoe around it. It’s just a really cool support system.”

That support system will be out in full strength as the whole family comes together just like they did to watch Denny’s dad in 2001. This time, though, it’ll be the younger generation of Denny’s on the start line.

Denny is hoping for his best race yet. He’s logged 90-mile weeks, learned from his younger years to back off when he needs to, and he thinks he has a sub-2:28 in his legs. The key will be exercising the patience he’s built up from over a decade of post-collegiate marathon running and making sure to have fun along the way. Decent weather won’t hurt, either.

“I was proud of him then and I’m really proud of him now for his commitment and dedication to running,” Maus said. “He’s overcome injuries, setbacks, and the challenges that life throws at you as you age. But he’s kept running as a priority in his life, which is something special. No matter what happens, he’ll have fun, he’ll give it everything he’s got, and he’ll keep grinding.”

Denny asserted that he’ll know it’s time to stop running when it’s no longer fun. He doesn’t know what the future holds, but he knows that day has not yet come. For now, he’s all in on Boston.

“Turning left on Boylston, the emotions, the crowd, just makes it all worth it,” Denny said. “How do I explain the Boston Marathon in less than 30 seconds? What that means to me, my family, my friends that still support me. You can’t. Until someone sees it, I just don’t think they understand it.”

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This year’s nationals had it all: national records, obscene numbers of all-time marks, freshman upsets, surprising performances, podium sweeps, and yes, some drama. It’d take a month to recount all of the glorious moments of the weekend, so we’ve cooked up some takes and highlights, including finally addressing the D3 elephant in the room by weighing in on the podium protests in the men’s 5k and 3k (at the end – because the overwhelming amount of undisputed good that happened this weekend deserves above-the-fold hype).

Here’s what happened at the 2026 D3 Indoor National Championships in Birmingham.

D3 women set five national records

The women of D3 absolutely stole the spotlight this weekend, setting five national records across different events. Loras’s Caitlyn Cox kicked off the excitement, surprising even herself when her first throw of the day measured a fabulous 21.00 meters, a new national record in the weight throw by two centimeters ahead of legendary Robyn Jarocki of Oshkosh. Cox’s seed heading into the weekend was 20.33 meters, a personal best that she shattered in multiple attempts: first, in her national record throw, and second on her last toss of 20.50 meters. Cox captured her very first national title this weekend in her seventh NCAA national meet.

Calvin’s Sydney Radigan continued the excitement when she ran a speedy 23.71 in the 200m dash prelim to shatter UMass Boston’s Wadeline Jonathas’s 23.90-second national record set at the Crossplex eight years prior. Radigan previously held the third fastest time in history, which she ran on a flat track to qualify for nationals. In just her second race on a banked track, Radigan showed what she can do in optimal conditions, making her first ever national final in dominant style. She led Platteville’s Izzy Peterson to No. 2 all-time with her performance of 23.80 in the prelim.

WashU set the second national record of the weekend in the last event of the night, clocking 11:29.59 in the DMR, making them the first team to dip under 11:30. Their team of Lauren Raley, Kylie Spytek, Kalena Riemer, and Lucinda Laughlin charged to the front and held their lead from their 400-meter leg onward, with impressive splits for every leg: 3:30.51 for Raley, 55.75 for Spytek, 2:14.93 for Riemer, and 4:48.42 for Laughlin. With this performance, this quartet perfectly showcased why the WashU Bears have one of the best, if not the best, middle distance programs in D3 history.

When fans were still sipping on their Saturday morning coffees, UMass Boston’s Aryianna Garceau charged toward the third D3 national record of the weekend in the first event of day two. Her 8.25 was the fastest 60-meter hurdle time of the season in the NEICAAA, a historical organization with members from all NCAA divisions across New England, and shattered her previous national record of 8.31 set at the New England D3 Championships earlier this season. With this performance, she became the first athlete in D3 history to dip under 8.3 in this event.

Just like they did on day one, the WashU Bears ended the day with a bang. Not only did they secure a national team trophy with their 4x400 relay, but they did so by setting a new NCAA D3 national record of 3:44.54. Only Wartburg has run faster when they ran 3:43.82 in 2012 on an oversized track, which the NCAA does not recognize as record-eligible, but D3GD does (sorry, WashU!) Still, the team of Kylie Spytek, Quinn Bird, Caroline Echols, and Hailey Weir ran incredibly toward the fastest record-eligible 4x4 time ever in D3, averaging 56-second splits to sweep the indoor relay events. Spytek, the relay warrior, emerged from the weekend with two relay national titles and two NCAA national records.

History books rewritten

An astonishing 70 top-20 all-time D3 marks were set over the weekend, making this year’s champs one of the deepest and most competitive in history. 41 of these marks were top-10 all-time marks. Once again, the women’s competition outshined the men’s with 41 top-20 updates to the men’s 29, and 24 top-10 updates to the men’s 17.

On both sides, the 200-meter dash saw the most change with five new or updated entries in the top 10 for both men and women. Rowan’s Rajahn Dixon set the leading time of the weekend when he won Saturday’s final in a blazing fast No. 2 all-time 20.92. The only athlete to ever have run faster was set by Rowan NJAC rival Ramapo’s Cheick Traore, who holds the D3 national record of 20.72. Oshkosh’s Dylan Doss narrowly missed the win from the second heat when he finished in 20.93, just a hundredth of a second off of Dixon, who led TCNJ’s Maxim Rychkov and Rowan teammate Eli Hendricks to No. 7 and No. 8 all-time performances, respectively. In the prelim, Salisbury’s Kai Smith ran a No. 6 all-time 21.09.

In the women’s race, all five top-10 marks were set on Friday’s prelim when Radigan and Peterson dipped under the national record in heat one. JCU’s Dakota Houston soloed a No. 4 all-time 23.93 later in heat 4, and North Carolina Wesleyan’s Kamiyah Wooten and Hope’s Sara Schermerhorn battled to the line in heat five to land No. 6 all time for Wooten with her 24.14 and No. 10 all-time for Schermerhorn with her 24.23. Only Peterson bettered her prelim performance in the final, her 23.78 lowering her No. 2 all-time mark and earning her a first national title. She battled Radigan to the line, barely outleaning the Calvin star by 0.02 seconds. Wooten tied her PR at 24.14 to earn third in the final.

Other big-time updates and near-records in the D3 history books came from Macalester’s Ariella Rogahn-Press, who ran a No. 2 all-time 54.22 in the 400m dash prelim; UWL’s 4x400m relay, who ran a No. 2 all-time 3:10.90 to take down a legendary school record team from 2003 that included eventual Olympic gold medalist Andrew Rock; and River Falls’s Jacob Balcome, whose heptathlon score of 5487 is the second highest point total in D3 history behind 2022 national record setter Marcus Weaver. To help achieve this score, Balcome set new lifetime PBs in the 1k, high jump, and shot put, and nearly matched a PB in the 60m hurdles. His 2.04-meter clearance in the high jump would have placed him tenth in the open competition.

Freshman standouts

Thirteen first-team All-Americans over the weekend were freshmen, signaling a rising tide of new D3 talent. This group of rookies was led by WashU’s Kate Delia, whose breakout victory race in the women’s 800 earned WashU, the eventual team victors, ten points and their sixth 800-meter national title in program history. Delia ran even 400-meter splits of 63.79 and 63.9 to finish in 2:07.69, the second fastest indoor time in school history and eighth fastest time in D3 history. Typically, even splits in the 800-meter indicate a faster time is attainable, so we look forward to witnessing the new era of 800-meter talent coming out of Saint Louis.

Distance events saw some freshman dominance with NYU’s Theo Udelson-Nee, who took third in the men’s 5k in an exhilarating last 400. Udelson-Nee was one of two freshmen to earn All-American in the 8,000-meter championship race in the fall. The top freshman in the fall was Johns Hopkins’s Anthony Clark, who joined Udelson-Nee on the podium with his impressive fourth-place 5k finish. Hopkins had two freshmen on the 5k podium this weekend, the first of which was eighth place finisher in the women’s 5k Mia Kotler, the 2025 14th place XC All-American and top freshman across both races in the fall.

The rest of these performances all took place in the jumping events, with the men’s long jump podium featuring the most freshman at three total. After Delia, Rowan’s David Brown tied with NYU’s Udelson-Nee for highest freshman finish with his third place finish in the men’s high jump.

Freshman All-Americans:

• Kate Delia (WashU) 1st in W 800m

• Theo Udelson-Nee (NYU) - 3rd in M 5k

• Anthony Clark (Johns Hopkins) - 4th in M 5k

• Mia Kotler (Johns Hopkins) - 8th in W 5k

• Riley Gardner (Illinois College) - 8th in W HJ

• Aubrey Rock (Westminster) - 8th in W PV

• Lauren Murphy (Rochester) - 6th in W TJ

• Brock DeBello (Wabash) - 6th in M 400m

• David Brown (Rowan) - 3rd in M HJ

• Bright John (Rowan) - 5th in M LJ

• Uly Junker (Williams) - 6th in M LJ

• Jason Ellman (Bethany) - 7th in M LJ*

• Keenan Powell (Greenville) - third in M TJ*

*graduated in 2024, but do not appear to have competed collegiately yet

All you need is a chance

In an interview with D3 Glory Days on Thursday, Wittenberg’s Kory Davis said his goal was to make the men’s 60-meter hurdle final and finish top-8 despite his No. 13 seeding. Davis went on to accomplish just that, running a PR to secure the last qualifying spot in the final. He finished sixth overall, seven spots better than his seeding.

There were several other athletes who made big leaps from their seed to finishing positions, proving anything can happen at the national meet if only you are given the opportunity to compete. Sometimes getting to the national meet is the hardest part.

Williams’s Kate Swann had the biggest leap from her seed to her finish. Swann was the last athlete into the women’s 5k after three scratches. With a lightning surge in the final straightaway on Friday, Swann secured runner-up, a full 18 places better than her seed. Her last lap was a blazing 34 seconds, the fastest in the field by almost two seconds.

On the men’s side, Lamont Victoria made the biggest jump from seed to finish. He entered the meet seeded 17th, ran a massive 0.08-second PR in the prelim, and, in an astonishing finish that came down to the thousandth of a second, won the men’s 60-meter national title, finishing 16 spots better than his seeded position.

Victoria is one of four athletes who made massive leaps to earn a national title over the weekend. Calvin women had a dominant national meet, with Sophie Bull entering the meet 11th and coming away with the national title in the women’s 3k and Sydney Radigan capturing the women’s 60-meter title after entering the meet 10th. OWU’s Connor Smith came in tied for tenth in the high jump and won the whole dang thing.

Here are the biggest jumps (9+ spots) athletes made from unseeded to top-8 All-American:

• 18 spots: Kate Swann (Williams) No. 20 in W 5k to 2nd

• 16 spots: Lamont Victoria (Lynchburg) No. 17 in M 60m to 1st

• 14 spots: Uly Junker (Williams) No. 20 in M LJ to 6th

• 14 spots: Isaiah Watson (Hamline) No. 19 in M TJ to 5th

• 13 spots: Kate Tuttle (Williams) No. 15 in W 3k to 2nd

• 13 spots: Mackenzie Huber (Illinois Wesleyan) No. 17 in W 800m to 4th

• 13 Spots: Eden Maranell (St. Norbert) No. 20 in WTJ to 7th

• 12 spots: Owen Clark (UWL) No. 15 in M 3k to 3rd

• 12 spots: Anna Sawicki (Lebanon Valley) No. 18 in Pent to 6th

• 11 spots: Evan Collette (Cortland State) No. 18 in M WT to 7th

• 11 spots: Cree Ross (Centre) No. 15 in M TJ to 4th

• 11 spots: Zoe Marcus (Amherst) No. 16 in W 800m to 5th

• 10 spots: Johns Hopkins No. 12 in W DMR to 2nd

• 10 spots: Elena Stanciu (UC Santa Cruz) No. 16 in W Mile to 6th

• 10 spots: Dylan Parker (Carthage) No. 18 in M 400m to 8th

• 10 spots: Sophie Bull (Calvin) No. 11 in W 3k to 1st

• 10 spots: Evan Lacey (RPI) No. 16 in M 3k to 6th

• 9 spots: Connor Smith (OWU) No. 10 in M HJ to 1st

• 9 spots: Jasmine Wright (WashU) No. 15 in W 60m to 6th

• 9 spots: Bailey Hedgemon (Washington & Lee) No. 14 in W WT to 5th

• 9 spots: Emerson Comer (SUNYG) No. 17 in M 5k to 8th

• 9 spots: Jordan Jones (Pfeiffer) No. 14 in M 60m to 5th

• 9 spots: Wartburg No. 12 in M DMR to 3rd

• 9 spots: Sydney Radigan (Calvin) No. 10 in W 60m to 1st

• 9 spots: Chris Short (Muhlenberg) No. 16 in M 400m to 7th

• 9 spots: Lucas Nicholson (Oshkosh) No. 15 in M 800m to 6th

• 9 spots: Evan Hofstetter (UC Santa Cruz) No. 15 in Hep to 6th

Here’s a special shoutout to Pfeiffer’s Jordan Jones and Wartburg men’s DMR team, both of whom not only far surpassed their seedings, but set top-10 all-time marks at the national meet. Jones’s 6.69 in the men’s 60-meter dash is No. 8 in D3 history, while Wartburg’s 9:45.77 is No. 7 all-time.

Boulderthon

Are you looking for your next race? You hear Noah talk about how much he loves running in Boulder and now’s your chance to see why he loves it so much. Boulderthon is Boulder, CO’s signature downtown marathon series taking place on September 27, 2026!

Boulderthon has it all. From the 5k to the marathon, there is a race for everyone. Believe you can and you will!

Boulderthon is offering $20 off to our readers for the Half or Marathon. Use code D3GloryDays at checkout!

Podium takeovers

How many podium finishes does a program need to rename their university after that event? If the answer is 3, then Whitworth is Shot PutU, Rowan is High JumpU, and WashU is Pole VaultU. All three programs impressed in these events.

Rowan, who eventually won the men’s team title, scored big team points with their quartet of freshman David Brown, who took third, Jamile Gantt, who was fourth, Noah Wampole, who was sixth, and Arrington Rhym, who took eighth. Brown and Gantt both cleared 2.09 meters with Brown winning for being clean over his first four bars, and Wampole and Rhym both cleared 2.06 meters with Wampole being clean over three consecutive bars. They even had a fifth athlete in this event, Isaiah Davenport, who did not make it on the board.

In the women’s shot put, the trio of Whitworth Pirates Amblessed Okemgbo, Kylie Loveless, and Madison Carr took second, fourth, and fifth respectively to absolutely dominate the podium in this event. Okemgbo had a great meet, setting a new 14.37-meter personal best to take runner-up.

The WashU Bears made a sweeping statement in the men’s pole vault, capturing third through sixth place in a tight competition. Trio Peter Lichtenberger, Tommaso Maiocco, and George Bourdier all cleared 5.08 meters, while Hayden Kunkel cleared a new personal-best height of 5.03 meters to tie for sixth with fellow UAA vaulter William Floyd. Similarly to Rowan, WashU had five athletes in this event, with Zachary Duckworth finishing 13th.

Though not all wearing the same jersey, a trio of Kates took over the women’s 5k podium after Williams’s Swann took second, NYU’s Kate Cochran took third, and MIT’s Kate Sanderson took fifth. What was most eye-opening about the women’s 5k podium was how it directly reflected the D3’s best women’s cross country teams; NYU, Williams, and MIT each had a pair of athletes on the eight-person podium.

Fall team champions NYU featured Cochran, who didn’t race at XC nationals, and Josephine Dziedzic, who was fourth over the weekend and 11th in the fall, on the indoor podium. XC team runners up Williams saw fall All-Americans Swann and Tamar Byl repeat their All-American honors, and MIT awarded Sanderson and Rujuta Sane, the individual national champion, each their second trophy of the school year.

Spike drama

From false starts in the 10k to controversial lane line and impedance calls, D3 has seen its fair share of drama at the national championships. One of the unfortunate spectacles throughout the weekend was banned shoe disqualifications in the horizontal jumps events. A total of five athletes got disqualified across the men’s and women’s triple and long jump competitions, at least one in each event and two in the men’s triple jump. In each case, the disqualified athlete would have finished on the podium.

All athletes had to get their metal spike inserts checked before competition, but random participants were selected to have their whole shoe checked after competition. If an athlete was caught with banned spikes at the shoe check-in, or at any time during the competition by an official or protesting competitor, they were disqualified from the results. Two athletes were disqualified before their final even began.

So what’s the deal with banned spikes? Shoe controversy had been boiling in the track and field world ever since the pre-COVID release of “super shoes.” In 2020, World Athletics amended its rules to consider the advancement of shoe technology and published a list of approved athletic shoes.

This list features a table of different shoe brands and models approved in at least one discipline out of five: Track, Jump, Throw, Road, and Cross. If a shoe is on the list, it’s approved in any discipline with a green “Y.” If a shoe is not on the list, it’s not approved by World Athletics in any event. Some shoes, like the Nike Maxfly, a popular sprinting spike, are approved for track but not jumps.

Starting November 1, 2024, WA simplified the rules to prohibit any shoe exceeding 20mm in sole thickness (or stack height), whereas prior to this date, thickness up to 25mm was permitted. Thus, any shoe at nationals with a measured stack height above 20mm was grounds for disqualification. Popular Nike jump spikes like the Triple Jump Elite 2 have a stack height between 20-25mm and are therefore not approved by World Athletics since 2024.

What makes this rule somewhat confusing is that certain shoes can have one iteration of a model that is approved, and another iteration of that same model that is banned. Such is the case for the Nike Triple Jump Elite 2. Its predecessor, the Triple Jump Elite, and its successor, the Triple Jump Elite 3 are both approved. The second iteration, however, is not on the approved list.

In Division 3, most athletes are responsible for acquiring their own training shoes and spikes and might go all season competing in a spike they do not know is banned because of lack of rule enforcement. Thus, the national meet becomes a tough lesson.

Whether a lesson you’ve learned the hard way or one you hope you never have to, fans, coaches, athletes, teammates, this PSA is for you! Save this link to your browser. Check it before you buy those new spikes for outdoor season and double check it before the big dance. To the jumps athletes unfortunately impacted by these indoor disqualifications: go get that trophy in May.

Podium protest

Though we usually focus on the quantitative moments in D3 history – times, trophy counts, all-time marks, etc. – D3 witnessed a qualitative moment in history last week when the men’s distance podiums became stages for two separate podium protests. Both protests were seemingly directed at Rowan’s Seth Clevenger, a D1 Iowa State transfer who won both the men’s 5k and 3k handily – ultimately scoring the final points of Rowan’s national title score – and who has also been shrouded in an alleged doping controversy publicized by LetsRun.com in a March 2 publication of this year.

The allegations herein were convincing enough to prompt an organized podium step-off of the second through eighth place finishers in the day one men’s 5k awards ceremony. All of the athletes stepped off the podium upon Clevenger receiving his national title trophy and moved to the side to take a separate podium picture, one that excluded Clevenger.

In our eyes, as the athletes stepped down from their podiums and filed off for an alternative group photo, they weren’t protesting Clevenger as much as they were protesting the systems that allowed him, or anyone with such allegations following them, to compete in the first place.

“For me, stepping off the podium was a no-brainer,” said one of the podium finishers. “It had been discussed among certain groups beforehand in the case that [Clevenger] won. It’s not about poor sportsmanship or being “salty” with losing, but rather, a desire for transparency from all organizations involved. We may never know the absolute truth, but until [Clevenger] is cleared of all wrongdoing from his previous team, people will continue to assume that he was kicked off for banned substances.”

Whether Clevenger is innocent or guilty, the fact remains: Cheating has always been, and will always be, a part of athletics. Positive tests are easily avoidable, if the tests happen at all. NCAA testing rules explicitly exclude D3, stating in its rulebook that “Student-athletes competing in Divisions I and II sports are subject to year-round testing.” Furthermore, NCAA athletics are becoming increasingly competitive – we see this in our own division with 70 new top-20 all-time marks from the weekend and even more so at the highest level of national competition – but testing frequency by the NCAA remains unknown.

At the 2025 USATF Outdoor Championships, 26% of competing athletes were NCAA athletes. This includes athletes running under NIL affiliations, which USADA Director of Intelligence and Investigations Dan Burke has publicly cited as something that is “heightening both pressure and temptation for athletes to seek performance advantages.” Of the NCAA athletes competing at outdoor USAs, only 16% were tested by USADA in 2025, leaving the remaining 84% untested specifically by USADA. Of the 2025 untested NCAA athletes, 26% made event finals or were top 10 in final-only events, and 11% had the world standard.

Surely athletes competing on the highest national level possible are also dominating their respective NCAA divisions, though clean sport integrity in the NCAA remains a question so long as testing transparency remains hidden and the countless number of member institutions – institutions with stakes like salaries, reputation, and national titles – are allowed agency in enforcing the rules. Burke went on to say of the NCAA’s anti-doping policies that “the need for reform has never been greater.”

Agencies like USADA exist because so often in sport, athletes are expected to compete against individuals under a cloud of suspicion, with little recourse to protect themselves. They go out, put allegations out of their mind, and square up against their competition on the level playing field they’ve created in their mind. Afterwards, they’re left with the questions.

On day two during the men’s 3k podium, a similar scene unfolded: all but one of the second through eighth place finishers stepped off the podium when Clevenger received his winning trophy from Rowan Assistant and Olympian Norm Tate. Once again, the participating group moved to the side for a separate photo.

“I made the decision to step off the podium before I even got to the national meet,” said another podium finisher. “Given the severity of the allegations against Clevenger and the Rowan program and the fact that they have declined numerous interview opportunities, there is no doubt in my mind that they have something to hide. That is not a good representation of what Division 3 is.”

*D3 Glory Days did ask Rowan coaches to interview Clevenger after the 5k and DMR and was declined both times.

The allegations will stay just that – allegations. Likely, no one will be able to prove wrongdoing, and the scenario where the allegations are completely false is just as hard to prove. What we’re left with is the understanding that no one made any effort to protect these athletes on either side. Obtaining the truth of this matter – whether clothed in innocence, guilt, or some combination thereof – is possible, but the associated institutions have indicated to the public that they are not interested in fully doing this work by choosing to remain silent*. While a few outsiders may rush to judgement, shaking their head at a group of ‘sore losers’, most understand that the podium athletes’ position was courageous. They ran their race and made their voices heard.

Hopefully someone will listen.

“Stepping off the podium in solidarity and taking a separate picture with the other All-Americans was a great moment with some of my best friends in the sport,” a podium finisher continued.

At the end of the day, “best friends in sport” is part of what makes D3 special, and it’s something that can perhaps only be fully understood by those who have completely immersed themselves in the division. It’s one that sticks together, celebrates each other, and asks “why not me?” in the face of every adversity.

This moment of protest in D3 is one that will be remembered for a long time because it reflected D3 athletes doing exactly what D3 does best: following their hearts.

Every athlete at this year’s championship made a commitment to do just that when they joined the D3 ranks, and here it gave us five national records, 41 top-10 all-time marks, 13 freshman All-Americans, four unseeded national champions, and three podium takeovers. Sure, there was drama, but more than that, there was passion, and that’s what deserves the most celebration.

A big thanks to Bombas for their support. You train hard. Your socks should work just as hard. Trust us, they make all the difference. Use code GloryDays21 for 21% when you checkout on Bombas.com

The team at D3GD has done it again—we’ve covered every national event and given you the quick-hitters to watch for in the upcoming 2026 Indoor National Championships back at the Crossplex in Birmingham, Ala. for the first time since 2023. Tune into the free, live NCAA broadcast with Stu Newstat and Will Leer in the booth, and be sure to follow us on social media for every exciting nationals update. Emily Richards and Christian Patzka will be trackside all weekend for interviews, and our team of photographers and videographers Jen Reagan, Aaron Tries, Seawon Park, and Alan Lam will be capturing all the best moments.

Check out the full story on our website here.

Boulderthon

Are you looking for your next race? You hear Noah talk about how much he loves running in Boulder and now’s your chance to see why he loves it so much. Boulderthon is Boulder, CO’s signature downtown marathon series taking place on September 27, 2026!

Boulderthon has it all. From the 5k to the marathon, there is a race for everyone. Believe you can and you will!

Boulderthon is offering $20 off to our readers for the Half or Marathon. Use code D3GloryDays at checkout.

Here’s to the glory days!

A big thanks to Bombas for their support. You train hard. Your socks should work just as hard. Trust us, they make all the difference. Use code GloryDays21 for 21% off when you checkout on Bombas.com

Postseason is here, and what better way to celebrate than with a trio of national records? Both the men’s and women’s 60m hurdle records as well as the women’s long jump record fell this past weekend at championship meets all over the country. Luke Schroeder, Aryianna Garceau, and Chloe Hein go down as Division 3’s best with their performances of 7.67 in the men’s hurdles, 8.31 in the women’s hurdles, and 6.46 meters in the women’s long jump

In addition, the nation saw several of the nation’s best marks in history come out of conference weekend, particularly in the sprints and field events. 20 total top-20 marks were set at conference meets, and five men’s and nine women’s top-10 marks made their way into the history books.

New top-10 additions:

• No. 4. Women’s 60m- Isabel Peterson (UW-Platteville)- 7.46

• No. 3 Women’s 200m- Sydney Radigan (Calvin)- 23.98

• No. 7 Men’s 400m- Cameron Elliott (Wittenberg)- 47.07

• No. 9 Men’s 400m- Jack Kittle (Wittenberg)- 47.08

• No. 1 Men’s 60mH- Luke Schroeder (UW-La Crosse)- 7.67

• No. 1 Women’s 60mH- Aryianna Garceau (UMass Boston)- 8.31

• No. 9 Women’s 60mH- Jill Ambler (SUNY Geneseo)- 8.49

• No. 7 Men’s 4x400m relay- TCNJ - 3:11.82

• No. 8 Women’s HJ- Avery Becker-Schlendering (Ohio Northern)- 1.79m

• No. 10 Women’s HJ- Serena McNeilly (Centre)- 1.78m

• No. 6 Men’s LJ- Cameron Sample (Fredonia)- 7.66m

• No. 1 Women’s LJ- Chloe Hein (Centre)- 6.46m

• No. 6 Women’s LJ- Jill Ambler (SUNY Geneseo)- 6.11m

• No. 8 Women’s WT- Erika Ezumba (Johns Hopkins)- 19.59m

Notable additions include Platteville’s Isabel Peterson, who is already No. 9 in the women’s 200m and now rises to No. 4 all-time in the women’s 60m dash, Calvin’s Sydney Radigan, who becomes the third athlete in D3 history to dip under 24 seconds in the women’s 200m and the second to do so on a flat track behind Lauren Jarrett, and Johns Hopkins’s Erika Ezumba, who has gone from never qualifying for in indoor NCAA meet to having the eighth farthest weight throw in D3 history.

National records fall

The only photo we could find of UWL’s Luke Schroeder from nationals last year was one where he crutched to the national champion team podium indoors in 2024 after diving across the finish line to take fifth in the men’s 200m final. A crucial part of UWL’s team success, Schroeder has never scored points for the Eagles in the 60m hurdles at nationals. Despite an unlucky string of disqualifications, the wait has been worth it. Two years later, Schroeder is now the national record holder in the 60-meter hurdles.

In a stunning WIAC prelim, Schroeder pulled away from the field to practically solo a 7.67-second national record. In the final, he repeated this feat, posting a highly consistent 7.68, which also dipped under the previous national record of 7.72, held by one-year-in-D3 freshman phenom Jamir Brown during his time at Rowan.

This weekend was all about the hurdles, as UMass Boston’s Aryianna Garceau broke the women’s 60-meter hurdle record at New England D3 Championships in Boston. Two weeks ago, Garceau came close enough to Gustavus Adolphus’s Birgen Nelson’s 8.33-second record to smell it when she ran 8.37, just 0.02 seconds off of a personal best at the Crimson Open. This weekend, however, Garceau left no doubt. Her 8.31 beat the next finisher by a full half-second and set a new D3 record.

In similar fashion, Centre’s Chloe Hein knows what it’s like to use close-but-not-close-enough as motivation. Two weeks ago, she tied the women’s long jump with her incredible 6.41-meter clearance. Though technically a national record, Hein’s performance was not the outright best in D3 history, as Illinois College’s Melissa Norville cleared the exact same distance over a decade ago in 2013. At the SAA Championships this past weekend, Hein finally became the undisputed best. Her 6.46-meter jump is the farthest in D3 history by five full centimeters.

Boulderthon

Are you looking for your next race? You hear Noah talk about how much he loves running in Boulder and now’s your chance to see why he loves it so much. Boulderthon is Boulder, CO’s signature downtown marathon series taking place on September 27, 2026!

Boulderthon has it all. From the 5k to the marathon, there is a race for everyone. Believe you can and you will!

Boulderthon is offering $20 off to our readers for the Half or Marathon. Use code D3GloryDays at checkout!

Jill Ambler’s incredible Empire 8 weekend

Ironically, Hein and Garceau will both have their work cut out for them at nationals in a few weeks all because of one Jill Ambler from SUNY Geneseo. What a day Ambler had at Empire 8s on Friday! Ambler set D3 top-ten all-time marks in two different events: the long jump and 60m hurdles. She kicked the championships off with a stunning 60-meter hurdle prelim in which she won handily in a speedy 8.49 seconds, the ninth fastest indoor hurdles time in D3 history. She then hurried over to long jump, which was happening concurrently (though she was in flight two), and dropped a massive third jump of 6.11 meters, the sixth farthest leap in D3 history.

With Ambler in either or both events, the women’s 60-meter hurdles and long jump are shaping up to be a competitive battle at nationals. Add to the mix No. 7 Pacific’s Allyson Hammond and No. 11 after this weekend Ithaca’s Rachel Larson and the national hurdle final will have intense depth.

Women’s high jump competition heats up

Another event that could be one of the most competitive national events of the meet, especially after marks from this weekend, is the women’s high jump. National leader and No. 3 all-time Allie Wildsmith traveled to NYC for the USATF Indoor Championships, where she was the only current D3 athlete represented. Her 1.74-meter clearance placed her 8th in the U.S. and gave her valuable experience competing against some of the best in the nation before taking on the best D3 athletes in the nation

.

Two more athletes jumped into the top-10 all-time in this event over the weekend as well: Ohio Northern’s Avery Becker-Schlendering and Centre’s Serena McNeilly. Becker-Schlendering cleared 1.79 meters at the OAC meet, and McNeilly cleared 1.78 meters at SAAs. Truly an event of centimeters, the three top-10 all-time leaders in this event are separated by a mere three centimeters of one another.

Wittenberg duo impresses in nail biting men’s 400m

When three-time indoor 400m All-American and 2025 Indoor 400m National Runner-up Basheer Alramahi moved from the OAC, a recently very deep conference in the men’s 400m, to the NCAC, he might not have been expecting to have as much conference competition.

Enter: Wittenberg duo Cameron Elliott and Jack Kittle. In the deepest men’s 400m of any other conference meet (though the WIAC comes close with duo Colin Conzemius and Dylan Doss running a pair of 47’s on a flat 200-meter track), Wittenberg secured an exhilarating 1-2 punch with Elliott and Kittle, who were separated by just one hundredth of a second. Alramahi coasted in at third, less than a tenth of a second back, making this almost a blanket finish. Wabash’s Brock DeBello finished fourth in 47.47, the eighth time in D3 currently. Elliott’s 47.07, Kittle’s 47.08, and Alramahi’s 47.16 jumped to the 3-5 positions on the leaderboards behind Conzemius and Doss.

With Oshkosh’s Tyran Bender and UWL’s Chase Doornick, as well as Wabash’s DeBello and JCU’s Tyler Gast all in the top 12 rankings ahead of nationals, it’s entirely possible that the NCAA final could resemble a WIAC-NCAC dual meet.

With nationals just two weekends away now, the stakes are rising and the competition is stiffening. A lot of emotion is generally placed on conference weekend, producing some of the best performances of the year. The challenge now becomes carrying that conference weekend magic and momentum into the weeks ahead.

Alumni news

This past weekend was also a huge weekend for D3 alums. UW-Eau Claire alum Roger Steen won the U.S. Indoor National Title in the men’s shot put, earning his spot on the world team in Poland later this month. His 21.81-meter toss on his first throw of the finals moved him into a lead that he would hold for the remainder of the competition.

Other D3 alums represented at nationals included Stevenson alum Nathan Williams and Widener alum Alex Kristeller in the men’s weight throw (Williams was third overall and Kristeller fourth) and Carleton alum Matt Wilkinson, who placed sixth overall in a riveting men’s 3k.

Centre alum Annie Rodenfels placed third at the USATF Half Marathon Championships in her half marathon debut. The top three finishers are selected to represent Team USA at the World Championships in Copenhagen in September, but an official lead vehicle directed the field’s top three runners off-course in the race’s last miles. USATF issued a statement that they would not alter the results, but would review the situation ahead of final team selections in May.

Rodenfels posted to Instagram that she did not feel like she finished 3rd, rather 6th, a place she was very happy with, and that she hopes USATF selects the three leaders led off course to Team USA.

Loras alum Kassie Parker shared a few miles with Rodenfels and finished 4th, running 1:10:42, marking another 70-minute half performance. We’re looking forward to her eventual(?) marathon debut!

Central College alum Caroline McMartin finished 31st. On the men’s side, Marywood alum Michael McCann finished 23rd.

This weekend was also Tokyo Marathon weekend, and Ripon alum Sam Forstner finished the men’s marathon in 2:17:18, narrowly missing his 2:16:58 PB from Chicago last year. He is less than a minute from the OTQ standard of 2:16:00. Forstner never qualified for NCAA D3 nationals while an athlete at Ripon.

UChicago alum Abby Shoemaker won the Napa Valley Marathon in 2:35:50 to secure an Olympic Trials qualifying mark for 2028.

A big thanks to Bombas for their support. You train hard. Your socks should work just as hard. Trust us, they make all the difference. Use code GloryDays21 for 21% when you checkout on Bombas.com

The indoor track season is well underway! Lots of big results are popping up all over the country, but here are some of the major highlights:

• Platteville’s Isabel Peterson jumped to lead the short sprints with a No. 11 all-time 7.52 mark in the 60-meter dash and a 23.88 flat-track converted 200-meter dash time from the Mark Schuck Open. Peterson’s unconverted time of 24.25 comes in at No. 9 all-time in all conditions.

• Hope’s Sara Schermerhorn leads the women’s 400-meter dash by almost a full second after running 54.60 at Notre Dame. With this time, Schermerhorn nearly misses her No. 4 all-time mark of 54.58.

• The 800’s are heating up on both sides with six men’s marks and five women’s marks leading the charts after this weekend. MIT’s David Whitaker currently leads the men’s event with 1:50.06, and SUNY G’s Sierra Doody leads the women’s marks in 2:10.17.

• Oshkosh’s Amelia Lehman’s flat-track converted 9:23.31 now leads the women’s 3k marks by over ten seconds over Vassar standout Haley Schoenegge. Lehman’s unconverted 9:28.14 is No. 11 all-time.

• National champ Aryianna Garceau from UMass Boston is back in action with a nation-leading 8.46 in the women’s 60m hurdles.

• Colby dropped some fast times in both the men’s and women’s 4x400m relays. Their men’s team currently leads the nation in 3:14.30, while their women are currently ranked second behind WashU, who ran 3:48.07 this past weekend at Rose-Hulman.

• Hope men put together a strong DMR at Notre Dame, posting the first and only sub-10 clocking of the year in this event so far.

• National champion Coast Guard’s Allie Wildsmith cleared 1.79m in the women’s high jump this past weekend to take the national lead.

• Centre’s Chloe Hein dropped a bomb in women’s long jump with a national leading leap of 6.17 meters, 23 centimeters ahead of the next competitor and the No. 4 farthest leap all-time.

• WashU’s Jenae Bothe leads the women’s shot put with a toss of 14.40 meters (47’3”).

• In the off-distances, Vassar’s Haley Schoenegge hopped in a fast 1k in Boston to become the undisputed national record holder in this event with her 2:50.14, and JCU’s Basheer Alramahi came nail-bitingly close to the 600-meter all-conditions national record with his time of 1:17.97, just .04 seconds off of Matt McBride’s all-time all-conditions lead.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our D3 homecoming coaches series this past month. If you missed it, you can go back and read them on our website. Below is our final installment of the series, where coaches Sarah Burnell, Jamie Norton, and Nicole Kramer offer their best advice. Make sure you’re following D3 Glory Days on social media and subscribed to our newsletter on Substack for more content like this as well as past and current D3 coverage.

Speaking of past D3 athletes, anyone running the Boston Marathon? We want to hear from you! Please fill out THIS FORM so that we can include you in our Boston coverage.

Lessons

Though each seemingly has their dream job now, the rise to head coaching was not always glamorous, and each coach had to learn hard lessons along the way. From mentor advice to personal growth, hear the advice Kramer, Norton, and Burnell offer to young coaches.

To those coaches reading this, hopefully you find in it some inspiration as you emerge from winter hibernation and find yourself in the throes of the season. And to the athletes, these are the glory days, but maybe they don’t have to be. Absorb all that you can while you can, and maybe one day, you too, will be leading your current programs.

Coach Burnell on making connections and not giving up:

“I think there are two pieces of advice. The first is when you’re coaching other people, the thing that I think has impacted my athletes the most is saying hello to everyone and saying everybody’s name every day. It’s such a small thing. One thing that Ellen had taught me was: everyone should feel valued in the space that you’re creating. And that’s how you do it. It’s saying hi, asking each person how they’re doing. Just in general, connect with everybody.

For coaches, coaching and recruiting is super emotional. I have 60 people that are really depending on me to make them really fast and really strong. I feel a lot of responsibility there and that’s fine. That’s the job. On the hard days, just keep showing up. Even when it feels like it’s not working, when you feel like you’re doing everything wrong, you’re breaking people (you’re not actually), it kind of feels like nothing is going right. I’ve just kept showing up in the same way that you just keep showing up to do workouts–they sometimes feel bad for a little stretch, and then it just turns around. Sitting with the hard stuff and then really leaning into the happy and high moments are what I would say is helpful for coaching.”

Coach Norton on embracing the less-fun parts of the job and having patience:

“If you want to do this, it’s important to go all in on it. You have to get involved in as many things as possible beyond just the fun parts of being out at practice. Advice that was given to me very early on when I started doing this was: it’s great that you love the training and love interacting with the kids and love being at practice, but that’s the fun part of the job. If you want to do this as a career, you have to know that all of the less fun parts of the job, all of the administrative work, all of the recruiting balances out for you in the right way to make it worthwhile. The earlier you can figure that out, the better.

For people that are just starting out in it, the more that you can get a full picture and scope of what the job really entails to make sure that’s something you really wanna do, then you can confidently put your chips in on it.

And just be patient. I was really hard on myself in my first head coaching role trying to really build up a program. I think we had a lot of success [at La Verne], but it’s never as fast as you want it to be. It’s never as much as you want it to be. You always see the turnkey levels ahead of where you are right now and want to just get there today. You have to be patient with yourself, invest in your role, and do the best job within your role that you can to hopefully give yourself the opportunity to advance, but also be patient with that growth and just learn as much as possible.

I think I benefited from having several years to do the grunt work and being the bottom of the totem pole as a GA or as a volunteer assistant coach, but I learned so much through those experiences that set me up for success when I had the flashier jobs that people want. If I hadn’t had those experiences, I wouldn’t be here right now because I wouldn’t have been equipped for the roles that I’ve been able to grow into.”

Coach Kramer on trusting yourself, recharging, and simplifying:

“Number one is to be yourself, trust your instincts with the changes that you may need to make in the program and know that you’re in this role for a reason. No matter whose steps you’re following, you have something to bring to the table that can positively shape the future of the program and athletes’ lives.

I think taking breaks is important, too. I was able to take four days, pretty low-key over [winter] break amidst travel. It’s really important to take a little bit of time away when you can because this job can completely consume you if you let it, and then it’s hard to have perspective when you are thinking about work every single day all the time.

Keep it simple. Try not to overanalyze everything. I know I can be good at ruminating on certain decisions or things. Trust that you made the decisions you made for the good of the team and for a good reason with good counsel from assistant coaches and team leadership.

Because of my impactful experience at Calvin, I often remind myself that it’s a privilege to have this opportunity to work with student-athletes throughout each season of their journey through college. These four years are so important for developing student-athletes into the people they strive to become after graduation. Of course, we want to help athletes run their fastest, but we have to remember there are much more important things to life than running. Once we believe that point, running and competing becomes more fun and freeing than ever before.”

A big thanks to Bombas for their support. You train hard. Your socks should work just as hard. Trust us, they make all the difference. Use code GloryDays21 for 21% when you checkout on Bombas.com

Sarah Burnell’s boomerang catch

Like a boomerang, Grinnell, Iowa keeps coming back to Sarah Burnell. It’s the place she was raised and became a local running talent, it’s the place she decided to continue her college education and athletics career, and, now, it’s the place she has returned to carry out a career in college coaching. Perhaps no one is better equipped than Burnell for the job, either, as she knows exactly what it takes to succeed at a place like Grinnell, unique for its academic prestige in the heart of rural Iowa.

“The culture here is really curious, really passionate, a little bit adventurous,” Burnell said.

She explained that Grinnell has an open curriculum, giving students a say in which classes they take, and its backdrop in rural Iowa can be intimidating to some. To Burnell, however, the town with a population under 10,000 coined the “Jewel of the Prairie” is home.

“To be able to coach back in my hometown is awesome,” she said. “I get to be close to my family. I have a really strong support network. Grinnell is a small town. So many people here have watched me run through high school and college and support me now as I’m coaching the teams.”

Having been through the program herself from 2010-2014, Burnell graduated with a degree in anthropology and two All-American honors in the outdoor 1500m and indoor mile to her name. She then spent several seasons helping out at Grinnell before moving to Columbus, Ohio where she worked as the Assistant Director of Alumni Relations, volunteered as a Cross Country and Track and Field Assistant Coach, and continued running post-collegiately (having qualified for and competed at the Boston Marathon in both 2016 and 2017).

It was at Otterbein that she was mentored by Coach Dara Ford on how to succeed as a woman in college coaching, something that was becoming more and more appealing to Burnell as a path forward. She eventually entered a graduate program in Exercise and Sport Studies at Smith College, where she accepted a GA position under the mentorship of Coach Ellen O’Neill.

“[O’Neill] had a wealth of knowledge of–not so much how to get into coaching the way that Dara was helping me navigate that, but–the things that she had learned from coaching women for so long and how it’s evolved, the things that we still needed to change, and how I could help support women specifically.”

Burnell would eventually apply this knowledge when she took over as Head Women’s and Men’s Cross Country Coach at Grinnell in the summer of 2020. Taking over the program coincided with the global Covid-19 pandemic, which gave her the unique opportunity to rebuild.

“I got [to watch] the team cultures go from feeling a little bit out of place on the starting line for some races,” Burnell said, “to jumping forward five years to now where there’s talk about, ‘yeah, we want to be running at nationals.’”

Though the Grinnell women’s team did not qualify as a team to nationals this year from the highly competitive Midwest region, they posted some head-turning performances. They beat ranked Colby at the mid-season Connecticut College Invitational, won the Midwest Conference title, and placed fifth at regionals, just 57 points shy of a nationals bid. Senior Hannah Roark placed 18th overall, earning her her first trip to nationals.

Burnell explained that the men’s team is also making huge leaps. The young squad took conference runner-up and posted a top-ten finish at Midwest regionals.

“I’m just really proud of them,” Burnell said of both teams. “They’ve always been capable of doing really big things, but seeing [them see] it in themselves that they’re capable of it has been really fun to watch.”

When it comes to coaching her athletes and fostering their growth, Burnell has leaned a lot on her own running experiences to inform how to coach athletes with similar demands for knowledge.

“When I was post-college trying to figure out how to run marathons, I was having to think a lot more and realized how hard it is to coach yourself,” Burnell said. “I work with a lot of students who like to think about their training. They are nerds, they want to understand why. They want to read the books on my bookshelf about exercise physiology and how the body works and trains and adapts.”

Burnell noted that the best practices for effective coaching she has found are to empower her athletes with such knowledge, while also offering an individualized approach and reminding them of the bigger picture. The environment at a place like Grinnell can be stressful with its academic rigor, so she is intentional about empathizing with her student-athletes, something that comes naturally as someone who has gone through the same program.

“Having experienced it helps me challenge them,” Burnell said. “I can set pretty high standards for our program in terms of the amount of dedication and also the expectation they’re going to do really well in school and say, ‘I know it’s hard, but I’ve done it and I know you can do it, too.’”

Moving forward, Burnell hopes to establish a consistent expectation of success.

“I would love to be very consistently winning our conference championship,” she said. “The next step is to get some individuals to nationals, which we did this year on the women’s side, but then the end goal is making sure we have a regular appearance on the national stage.”

Perhaps because she was once one of them, Burnell is excited to be back in Grinnell working with student-athletes who are not just driven and motivated but balanced, recognizing that there is a lot more to life than running. As someone who has been through every iteration of competitive running possible in Grinnell, Burnell’s position on balance carries extra weight.

“I coach because I’m competitive and I want to have fast runners and I want us to do cool things like break records and go to nationals and all that fun stuff,” Burnell said. “But also at the end of the day, coaching has a greater purpose, which is to make sure we have strong, healthy, confident women and men.”

With a boomerang catch in hand, Burnell shows us that sometimes the biggest impact you can make is the one in the community that shaped you, especially during a time when community is becoming increasingly more important.

“My greater purpose is [giving] people a good experience but also [educating] these students who will maybe go on to coach young kids,” Burnell said. “We make sure we ultimately give them the skills and the confidence so when they’re sitting in boardrooms they’re making good decisions about funding, our world, the government. We make sure we make them confident, thoughtful, and kind.”

A big thanks to Bombas for their support. You train hard. Your socks should work just as hard. Trust us, they make all the difference. Use code GloryDays21 for 21% when you checkout on Bombas.com

Nicole Kramer and Calvin’s ‘4P’s’

One of the first orders of business for Nicole Kramer, who joined the Calvin coaching staff in 2022 as the new Head Cross Country Coach, was to unlock a room of dusty trophies in the field house (yes, Calvin athletics have been so successful that they have an entire room for overflow trophies in addition to the main trophy case).

She picked up a second-place NCAA national trophy from 2008, dusted it off, and placed it in her office where she can see it every day.

The trophy Kramer picked out was not random—it was the second place trophy her team had won when she was a junior at Calvin.

“I’m like, ‘can I put one of these in my office?’” Kramer said. “‘Because this one right here is gonna motivate me a whole lot.’ Not because we finished second in the country and look at that as a great moment—even though it was a great accomplishment—but because we wanted more.”

Now at the helm of the same program she competed for from 2006-2010, Kramer hopes to continue the legacy of long-established excellence at her alma mater Calvin.

She follows directly in the footsteps of her own college cross country coach, recent 2025 USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame inductee Brian Diemer, who coached cross country and distance athletes at Calvin for 36 years. With the help of co-pilot Al Hoekstra, 2021 USTFCCCA Hall of Fame inductee and Women’s Head Cross Country Coach until 2005 Nancy Meyer, and longstanding assistant since 2005 Rick Otte, Diemer’s Knights saw a wealth of success. They earned four men’s national titles, 30 combined national top-10 finishes, 16 combined national top-4 finishes, 36 combined Great Lakes regional titles, and 43 combined MIAA conference titles, the most titles in MIAA history.

On a Tuesday night last December in Grapevine, Texas, Kramer watched Diemer’s legacy become cemented in the USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame.

“Diemer was admirable for a lot of different reasons,” Kramer said. “I think I’ve always been impressed by how he could prioritize and balance many important things in his life. It’s important to realize he was never a full time coach. He’s someone who had a lot of different roles.”

While becoming one of the most decorated distance coaches in the state of Michigan, Diemer was also working full-time as a part owner of a successful landscape business in West Michigan and balancing family life with his wife, Kerri, and their four kids.

“I’ve asked him that,” Kramer said. “Like, ‘how were you able to balance it?’ And he would say ‘whenever I was at work, I was focused on work. Whenever I was at practice, I was focused on practice. Whenever I was at home with the family, I was focused on the family.’ He was able to focus really well. His experience as an [elite] athlete probably helped him with that.”

A 1984 Bronze Olympic medalist in the steeplechase, Diemer successfully transferred his athletic talent to a career in coaching, inspiring athletes with stories about his time as a D1 runner at Michigan and eventually an elite athlete.

While Kramer admits she does not have Olympic tales as Diemer did, she does have something that is arguably just as special: an authenticity that comes from having been in each of her athletes’ shoes.

“That was important to start with back in 2022,” Kramer said. “A confirmation and ability to relate with [athletes] like, ‘hey, I’ve been here. I’m an alum. This place is really special to me.’ There were so many elements that I [remembered] fondly that still carried on through the team.”

When Kramer was an athlete on the team, Calvin’s women’s cross country program finished in the top 4 in the nation every single year, with 2008’s runner-up finish being the pinnacle. The men’s team won the national title in 2006 for the third time in their history. Having been a first-hand witness to Calvin’s success in college and a distant witness to their continued success well after graduation, it was only natural for Kramer to bring with her some self-inflicted pressure when she stepped into her new role as head coach. Diemer passed down to her a 34-year strong men’s MIAA winning streak, the second longest ongoing streak in all of D3 and a streak Kramer happily maintained for three more years. In 2025, however, the streak finally broke. Rival Hope took the conference title for the first time since 1986.

“If you merely look at results from last fall for the men’s team, it may look like a major setback,” Kramer said. “We knew losing six of the top seven from an MIAA and regional championship squad in 2024 was going to be a struggle to build back from, and coaching transitions have inherent challenges.”

Kramer continued to explain that despite some disappointing meet results, the team continues to be invested in the future. The underclassmen are adapting to the demands of college training, and the upperclassmen are leading the way, shifting team perspective through adversity. Kramer is adapting, too, holding back on the temptation to make major increases to volume and intensity that don’t necessarily benefit the future of her athletes.

“Instead of being filled with pressure and anticipation for an outcome we couldn’t control, we prioritized holding true to what was best for the team at the time,” Kramer said. “We took a look at where we were at and did our best to accept it, knowing we are a program that is seriously building toward what’s ahead.”

With the streak broken, a pressure valve released, and as the cliche goes, when one door closes, another one opens. Kramer is optimistic about where the program is headed.

“Culture-wise, the squad is in a really good spot,” she said. “Short term, we want to have a great track season. We want to make a lot of steps forward, be chasing indoor and outdoor conference titles on both the women’s and men’s side, and hopefully do some damage at nationals again in the distance events.”

Senior Sophie Bull comes off of a stunning fifth place All-American finish at the 2025 Cross Country National Championship and enters her season ready to have fun and maybe even try some new distances with a steeplechase national title already secured in 2025 (though don’t count her out to defend her title this year!).

Though the results are fun to chase, Kramer hopes that the culture piece of her team will also sustain itself long-term. She understands that it can be a slow process at first that requires patience and care.

“Long term, I’ve developed and tried to be a little bit more concise with some of our team priorities and answering the question, ‘why run for Calvin?’” Kramer said.

She coined her program pillars ‘the four P’s’: the people, the process, the parallels, and the past and present. Kramer’s alliterative acronym is meant to hone in on her program’s philosophy of building a positive, team-first culture centered around faith, family, academics, and athletics; trusting the process, especially early on; drawing parallels between running and personal growth in life and faith; and respecting and knowing the long-standing history of success of the Calvin program.

As an alum, Kramer holds each of these ideals close as she draws from her own experience in the program and reflects on what it means to be a Calvin Knight.

“Change is inevitable, but you also have to know where you come from and have a lot of pride in wearing the Calvin uniform,” Kramer said. “Because there’s a very rich history that we can’t forget about.”

A big thanks to Bombas for their support this fall. You train hard. Your socks should work just as hard. Trust us they make all the difference. Use code GloryDays21 for 21% when you checkout on Bombas.com

Home

“Home’s where you go when you run out of homes.”

― John le Carré

It’s not that “home” is a place that can’t be created outside of what was once familiar to us, or that belonging fails away from our roots, or that home is a last resort. The fact is simply that “home” is often an unparalleled comfort, a refuge, a place where we can be our true selves.

For coaches Jamie Norton of Tufts, Nicole Kramer of Calvin, and Sarah Burnell of Grinnell, “home” is the place that each hopes to shape into something even better than what shaped them. As alumni returning to their alma maters now as head coaches, coming home is not just exciting–it’s personal.

“There’s probably a little bit more–maybe subconscious, self-imposed–pressure knowing the legacy of the program and wanting to be a good steward of that,” Norton said. “It feels a little more personal, right? It shifts my perspective on what the program can and should be. It makes it feel a little bit more meaningful when we have success.”

For Kramer, a student-athlete career at Calvin is what inspired her to go into coaching, making the opportunity to coach at her alma mater even more special.

“From my time as a Knight, as a student-athlete from 2006 to 2010, I learned a lot and I think it really helped give me a framework, not only for my career path, but definitely the kind of program that I wanted to be leading and coaching for,” said Kramer.

For Burnell, the idea of returning to Grinnell has always felt authentically romantic.

“It means everything to be back in Grinnell,” said Burnell. “This is kind of my dream job and my dream place. And I’m just really grateful that the stars aligned.”

Hear from all three coaches on how their experiences away from home brought them back and equipped each of them to lead their programs to continued successes in this four-week series.

Jamie Norton raises the bar

When his first-born was three weeks old, Jamie Norton got on a plane and flew across the country for a job interview. After over a decade in various coaching roles at North Central, Williams, and La Verne, one job he always had at the back of his mind had finally opened: the Director of Track & Field/Cross Country role at his alma mater, Tufts.

“[It] felt like such an exciting opportunity to potentially have the chance to come back,” Norton said, “and play a role in building on the success that this program has had for many years, building a great community here that extends beyond the current team, and apply all the things that I’ve been learning in all these different roles to a place that means a lot to me and that I think is very well set up for success.”

Norton, who in 2014 had just emerged from Tufts with a shiny, new degree in international relations and economics and a still-standing school record of 4:06.38 in the indoor mile, did not initially see coaching as his path forward. However, when he found himself staying local after graduation and learning his college coach needed an extra set of hands while growing his family, it seemed like a logical next step. Norton filled a volunteer assistant role for a year and quickly fell enraptured.

“Over the course of that year, I was like, well, if I’m investing all my time in this and not even getting paid, but enjoying doing it that much, maybe this is something that I should think about trying to make a career,” Norton said.

A year later, he accepted a GA position for powerhouse North Central men’s cross country and track and field teams, where he worked under the legendary duo Al Carius and Frank Gramarosso, who he endearingly refers to as “Al and Grammy.”

“It was really eye-opening going to North Central, a program that has obviously for 50 years been operating at the highest, highest level,” Norton said.

He went on to explain that one of the key pieces to the program’s success and a philosophy that has stuck with him was the coaches’ ability to set boundaries with the time they invested into the team.

“Al and Grammy felt very strongly that to sustain the careers that they had, they also needed to make sure that they had the time to themselves,” Norton said. “Knowing when I need to prioritize taking care of myself and my own well-being, and encouraging my staff to do the same, was definitely important for me, especially now having a family and young kids, to see that model.”

Following his time at North Central, Norton was privileged to then work as an assistant with another Hall of Fame coach, Pete Farwell, as well as with notable Williams alum Dusty Lopez at Williams College, another program with a long history of success.

“Being able to learn from some of the best coaches that have ever done this [helped me to] synthesize my own philosophy,” Norton said. “It’s a Venn diagram, right? There’s certain things that overlap between the two programs that make you think, okay, maybe these are some of the real critical parts of success. But also in some ways [there are] very different ways of operating in very different program cultures. There’s not necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach to building a high-level team.”

Norton’s experiences at North Central and Williams finally landed him his first head coaching role in 2021 at SCIAC school La Verne, where he led the men’s and women’s cross country and distance programs for three years. Here, he helped the men’s team post three consecutive top-ten West regional finishes and led the women’s team to their best West regional finish in ten years. Under Norton’s tutelage, distance athletes at La Verne broke 11 school records.

In the spring of 2024, he heard rumors that Tufts men’s head coach Joel Williams might not be returning to his position and something might be opening up. When it did, Norton and his wife were excited at the prospect of returning back to the East Coast and Massachusetts, where both of them are from.

“The way coaching jobs go, you have to jump on the opportunity if it arises,” Norton said.

He was ultimately offered the job and accepted, pleased that it would be a role in which he would get to work with both the men’s and women’s teams in the newly combined director role. Previously, the role was split into two head coaching positions with Coach Williams taking the helm of the men’s team and Coach Kristen Morwick, who now serves as the Head Coach of Track and Field and Assistant Coach of Cross Country for both genders, formerly leading the women’s team only.

Norton recalls being part of a single-gender program during his time as an athlete as well as coaching in a single-gender program at North Central on the men’s side. It wasn’t until he worked with both teams at Williams and La Verne that he realized as a coach, he prefers the environment that integrating teams creates.

“It’s just way more efficient from a resources standpoint,” Norton said. “It is a big reason why we’ve started to have some success and are just better set up to create a high-level program. It creates a really unique and great environment within the teams.”

Evidence of the current setup working was on full display this fall, when Tufts men rose to be one of the top cross country teams in the country, taking down ranked NYU and SUNY Geneseo at the Connecticut College Invitational during the regular season and winning the NESCAC championship title for the first time since 2012 in a program record low score of 30 points. They went on to bag two All-Americans and place seventh overall at nationals, which was, again, the team’s best finish since 2012 .

The women’s team won its second East regional title in school history, earning them an automatic bid to the national meet over favorites MIT. At nationals, they placed 11th overall led by first-time XC All-American Liz Donahue. Seventh place for the men and 11th for the women made the best combined cross country program performance finish in Tufts history.

The last time Tufts saw themselves in this position, Norton was an athlete on the team in 2012. He did not get to compete on the national team, but he made the drive to Terre Haute to watch what would be Tufts’s greatest accomplishment until he would hold the program reins 13 years later. As an alum, he sees a lot of parallels between the team he was a part of and the one he now heads in terms of strong senior leadership and focus, but his experience coaching at other D3 powerhouse programs Williams and North Central have inspired how he does not just want to create greatness, but cement it.

“When you look at both the men and women, our best stretches in terms of national finish have then been followed by some not-so-great stretches,” Norton said. “To me, the mark of a great program is not just one-off success, but sustaining it over time.”

Norton recalls that his team placed 17th at nationals his senior year following their seventh place finish, then dropped to the low twenties for a few years, and eventually, did not make the cut for nationals several years after that. Now in a position where history is seemingly repeating itself, Norton is determined to write a different future for the Jumbos.

“It’s been a lot of trying to shift the culture of the team, raise the overall level of expectation that we have for ourselves, and see ourselves as a program that can be one that sustains really high-level success within Division III,” Norton said.

Just like some of the programs he was exposed to early in his coaching years, Norton believes there’s no reason why Tufts can’t be one of the best teams in the division, too.

“I think there’s a lot to be said for the institutional legacy, self-belief, and expectations that come from some of these programs that have been doing it for 40, 50 years,” he said. “That’s the kind of level of culture, self-belief, and expectation that we’re really trying to bring here now as well because we have everything in place here to do that. It’s just about helping our athletes see that.”

Though seventh was Tufts men’s highest place at nationals in over a decade, their finish in the fall left a lot more to be desired, especially after having beat podium finishers SUNY Geneseo and NYU earlier in the year. Norton acknowledges that both those programs have shown consistency at the highest level for a sustained period of time, which is where he hopes to see Tufts going in the years to come.

“I’m already super fired up about who’s going to step up to fill the shoes of these great seniors next year,” Norton said. “I think we have a lot of folks that are kind of behind the scenes right now that are ready for that.”

He added that he can’t wait to bring the culture and success that both teams had in the fall into the indoor and outdoor track season, describing the track group as “frickin’ awesome.”

Norton said he’s received numerous messages from alumni friends and peers expressing excitement over the Jumbos’ already achieved success, particularly when the men won the NESCAC meet, a meet with historic emphasis placed upon it during the season. As an alum himself, he recognizes how important Tufts is to its graduates and sees himself as a bridge connecting tradition to the current and next generations.

“I ate in the same dining halls and was a part of the same team traditions that happen outside of practice, and it’s cool to see all of that evolve over time but still be true to a lot of traditions that have been passed down for a long time,” Norton said.

As only someone who’s lived through it fully knows, Norton shows how these traditions can make an impact that extends well beyond someone’s four years at Tufts.

“Our goals go beyond just performance on the course seeing how meaningful this team has been to so many people in their lives, how many relationships and marriages that have come out of it,” Norton said.

The goal of Tufts moving forward is to carry on the torch, a torch that shines a little brighter in the hands of an alum.

“I really hope that over time we can build a really great connected community of student-athletes and alums and have people feel like they’re connected to something bigger than themselves,” Norton said.

Though he may not have known it as he whizzed around the track in his Tufts blue and brown, Norton was laying the connecting foundation. With lived history on his side, he raises the bar on what it means to be a Tufts Jumbo.