It’s that time of year when cross country gets real again.

For those of us who aren’t actively on a collegiate cross country team and are merely fans of the sport, there’s not a lot to catch the eye in the first six weeks or so of the season. Unlike, say, NCAA football, where every weekend has playoff implications, the back-loaded arc of the cross country season means that none of the top contenders truly show their cards until mid-October at the earliest. But now, with back-to-back weekends of Nuttycombe and the Pre-National Invitational, we have a bit more to talk about.

All the major team contenders, with the exception of reigning men’s champs Oklahoma State, took to the grass one of the last two weekends. Up in Wisconsin, last year’s runner-up, #1-ranked New Mexico, rolled through Colorado, BYU, and Arkansas with a 59-point total and their fifth runner taking 22nd place overall. Combined with their dethroning of Oklahoma State at the Cowboys’ home meet in September, the Lobos look to be the team to beat on the men’s side.

The women’s heavy-hitters largely descended on Terre Haute, Indiana, this past weekend instead. If you were just watching the finish-line highlights, the performance that stood out was Hannah Gapes’s dominant 18:57.6 victory in the 6km for NC State. Gapes is a very solid track runner, with a 4:07.44 1500m and a 15:25.93 5000m for PBs, but the Kiwi is really a cross country coach’s dream: grass and hills are where she thrives. She’s already got two top-ten finishes at NCAA XC entering her senior year, leading the Wolfpack to a team title with a fifth-place run in 2025, and she even finished top-20 for New Zealand at World XC this past January.

Don’t call her the outright favorite just yet. BYU was running without Jane Hedengren, who skipped the meet due to a mild illness. Hedengren already has one loss on her card so far in the 2026 season, finishing third at the Cowboy Jamboree behind two Cowgirls, but you’d be foolish to count out the sophomore with two NCAA titles already under her belt.

Most intriguingly, the Cougars eked out a win without Hedengren over the reigning national champs in their first matchup since NCAAs last year. BYU scored 84 points to NC State’s 88 with a team performance that sure made it seem like cougars, not wolves, are the animals known for pack running. Taylor Rohantinsky, the top BYU finisher, finished ninth, behind NC State’s second runner… but then the Cougars put a remarkable five finishers in the top 25 and seven in the top 30. BYU’s final scorer finished ahead of NC State’s fourth runner, which in turn used displacement of points to basically deliver the margin of victory.

Ironically, it was a bit of a role-reversal from last fall. Back in Missouri, Gapes led NC State as their top finisher but she was behind two BYU runners (Hedengren and Riley Chamberlain), and the Wolfpack took the win with a superior 3-4-5. When everybody has a couple low sticks, the comparative advantage up front doesn’t actually matter as much as your fifth runner’s ability to finish ten places higher than expected.

The men’s race told a similar story. Syracuse, a program that’s become synonymous with gritty cross country success via a roster of under-recruited future marathoners, was the only team in the top four to not have a finisher in the top ten. Instead, the Orangemen’s top four took 15-16-28-22, and a 44th-place finish from Connell Alford sealed the deal. At the other end of the spectrum, Wichita State runners took second and third overall but ended up fourth as a team with no other runners in the top 50.

While it would’ve been great to see Hedengren and Gapes battle to the line, the reminder of what truly makes cross country great was just as exciting. It is very hard—near impossible—to win anything meaningful on the strength of a single low stick, which means the action that matters most to the outcome of the meet is often occurring dozens of spots behind the winner. Runners like Hedengren will have plenty of time to shine throughout the year, especially during the more individualistic track season, but last weekend the heroes were runners like Lexi Goff, who moved up from 37th at 2k to 18th at the finish as BYU’s third scorer.

The greatest quarterback in the world is going to get absolutely crushed if he doesn’t have an offensive line to block for him or an open receiver to throw to. In running, the return of true team competition to our largely individualist sport is as welcome a sign of fall as apple pie or crunching leaves. As cross country starts to matter again, so too does the logo on the front of your jersey and the lengths every runner is willing to go to do it justice.

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