Meet Recap: 2025 NAIA Cross Country Championships

By Tyler Mayforth & Howard Willman, USTFCCCA November 21, 2025  

Champions were crowned on Saturday at the 2025 NAIA Cross Country Championships!

The meet was held at Apalachee Regional Park in Tallahassee, Florida, returning after the 2022 NAIA Championships were contested there.

Men’s 8k Race

A season defined by parity couldn’t have ended any other way.

Indiana Wesleyan captured the first national title in program history on Friday, emerging from a year-long slugfest to stand alone at the top. The second-ranked Wildcats tallied 117 points – the highest winning total since 2016 – and held off top-ranked The Master’s (Calif.) by 11. No. 3 Cumberlands (Ky.) secured third with 160 points, followed by No. 7 Rocky Mountain (Mont.) in fourth at 239, while No. 4 Taylor (Ind.) completed the top five with 247.

Patience defined IWU’s morning. The Wildcats sat 12th through 1170 meters – more than 300 points behind the early-leading Patriots – before steadily climbing the leaderboard. They moved to tenth by 2170 meters, seventh by 3k, third at 4k, and finally into the lead at 7k. Grant Flora and Braden Sweet proved instrumental in the surge, combining to move up 210 places from the first split to the finish (Flora went from 115th all the way to 25th).

Individual honors went to The Masters (Calif.)’s Jack Anderson, who traversed the 8k layout in 24:15.4. Anderson sprinted past Southern Oregon’s Mason Weisgerber on the final downhill to deliver the Mustangs’ second individual champion in program history, joining 2012 winner John Gilbertson. Brogan Collins also finished in the top ten for The Master’s (Calif.) in sixth.

Two programs matched the Mustangs in placing multiple runners in the top ten. Cumberlands (Ky.) put Ishak Mekideche in fifth and Julius Makinen in tenth, while Southern Oregon equaled that feat with Weisgerber in second and fourth-place Carter Stedman. Depth, however, kept the Raiders off the podium, as their remaining scorers crossed in 60th, 107th, and 116th.

Women’s 6k Race

No. 1 Taylor (Ind.) earned revenge in winning their first title since 2022. After a one-point loss last year, the Trojans won by 19 points this year over No. 2 Milligan (Tenn.), 90-109.

No. 7 Dordt (Iowa) was a surprising third with 136 points for the Defenders’ highest finish in program history, while defending champion No. 5 The Master’s (Calif.) edged No. 3 College of Idaho, 232-233, to round out the top-5.

Taylor was led by Jaynie Halterman, who bolted to an early lead in defending her individual title in a meet-record 20:13.2. Her winning margin of 30.4 seconds was the meet’s largest since 2020, when Emma Wilson of Huntington (Ind.) won by 35.6 seconds when the race distance was 5k.

But behind Halterman the Trojans found plenty of challenge, especially from Dordt, which entered with a program-high nationals finish of fifth from 2014. The Defenders actually had the lead at the 3k split (84 to Taylor’s 87) and were within two points of Taylor (101 to 103) with 1k to go.

The Trojans were 1-16-20-21-43 in team scoring at 5k with that two-point margin over Dordt’s 7-15-22-26-33, but Taylor’s 2-3-4 runners improved in the final kilometer to strengthen the lead, which at the finish become over Milligan as the Buffaloes moved up to the runner-up position after running third for most of the race.

Following Halterman for the Trojans scorers were Samantha Patterson (14th), Catey Campbell (17th), Noel Bass (20th) and Malarie Pinwar (51st). Bass (nee VanderWall) was a member of Taylor’s last title team in 2022, also held in Tallahassee.

Milligan was led by the runner-up finish of Ellen-Mary Kearney (20:43.6) in placing in the top-10 for the third time in four years. Heather Murphy of Montreat (N.C.) was third (20:46.1) while Alauna Carstens of Evergreen State (Wash.) and Grace Steinmetz of Bellevue (Neb.) completed the individual top-5.