LEAVENWORTH - During a preseason meeting without their coaches in attendance members of the Kansas Wesleyan women's cross country team set a lofty goal for the 2025 season - win the Kansas Conference Championship.
Running on the home course of pre-race favorite and 10th-ranked Saint Mary the Coyotes placed five runners among the top nine and completed their mission Saturday morning. They finished with 27 points, just ahead of Saint Mary, which had 32. Evangel was third with 98 points.
Their reward is a berth in the NAIA National Championships on Nov. 21 in Tallahassee, Fla. It was KWU's first women's conference cross country title since 2013.
"They said, 'we want to win a conference championship," coach Garret Young said of the meeting. "We knew that was going to be a tall ask but they went (into the season) wanting to do it. From the very get go we wanted to set really high hopes, really high expectations and we did not fall short."
Kierra Jensen led the way finishing second in 22 minutes, 32.51 seconds. Kirstin Hackney was third (22:34.85), Josie Koppes sixth (22:51.07), Madisyn Ehrlich seventh (23:02.94) and Micah Dicken ninth (23:30.98).
Saint Mary's Josie Tyrell won the 6-kilomenter race in 21:40.77.
"We went in with a really aggressive race plan, and they executed to the highest level," Young said. "I'm really proud of the effort that they put out there today. I'm really proud of the belief, the faith they had in themselves, and to do that on Saint Mary's home course was definitely not an easy task."
Young said his runners didn't let the moment get the best of them.
"Josie Tyrell ran a very brave race. I mean, she got out super hard," he said. "I don't know that our girls saw her a whole lot of her but beyond that Kierra Jensen and Kirstin Hackney were kind of leading that next charge and had to battle some (Saint Mary) Spires. But they were just very, very composed."
Young said it was effectively business as usual.
"They just show up every single day with a work-hard attitude and can-do mindset," he said. "I throw a lot of hard tasks at them that they go and complete them without any complaints. They execute at a really high level, and they've never questioned the process. It makes my job a lot easier."