Graham Blanks Repeats, BYU Wins as Year of Ed Eyestone Continues at 2024 NCAA Cross Country Championships

VERONA, Wis. – Graham Blanks left no doubt.

Blanks, a senior at Harvard, unleashed a devastating move on the final big hill at the 2024 NCAA Cross Country Championships to break free of the field before 9k and repeat as champion in 28:37.2 as New Mexico’s 26:53 man Habtom Samuel, who ran the final 5k with one shoe, finished a game 2nd in 28:38.9.

Furman senior Dylan Schubert was the surprise of the day in third in 29:39.6 after finishing 24th last year (he was 11th in 2022) as American individuals did much better than expected, taking six of the top nine places (BYU’s Casey Clinger was 6th, UNC’s Parker Wolfe and Ethan Strand were 7th and 8th and Villanova’s Liam Murphy was 9th).

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Team-wise, the year of Ed Eyestone rolled on as his #1 BYU Cougars held on and the won men’s title here today at the University of Wisconsin’s Thomas Zimmer Championship Course, holding off a late charge from #4 Iowa State to win the program’s second NCAA men’s title, 124 to 137.

Eyestone’s athletes have been having an amazing 2024. His pro marathoners Conner Mantz and Clayton Young went 1-2 at the US Olympic Marathon Trials in February, then both finished in the top 10 at the Olympics in August before finishing as the top two Americans at the New York City Marathon three weeks ago. On the track, Kenneth Rooks and James Corrigan went 1-3 in the Olympic Trials steeple before Rooks shocked the world with a silver medal at the Paris Olympics.

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The expected battle between #1 BYU and #2 Oklahoma State, the 2023 champs who returned four runners from the top 12 last year, never materialized as Oklahoma State’s 5-6-7 went out very conservatively – outside of the top 160 at 2k. Oklahoma State’s fifth never got higher than 79th in the team scoring (at 6k) and they ended up outside the podium in 8th with 256 points.

Analysis & interviews below results.

Top Results

*Full men’s results here  *All LRC post-race interviews

Graham Blanks joins some great company. Is his collegiate career coming to an end?

The last four Americans to repeat as NCAA cross country champion are Gerry Lindgren, Steve Prefontaine, Conner Mantz*, and now Graham Blanks. 

Good company to have.

Despite winning last year and having run this course three times, Blanks took no chances with his preparation. He said he studied the course topography on the Footpath app and knew the final hill where he struck was a good place to push.

The victory in the end did not look in doubt, but Blanks wished it was easier, “To be honest, I wish I could have enjoyed it a little more. I was in a lot of pain. Going into that last turn, I was like, ‘ah, man, I might not have it’ cause I know these guys [have] got kicks.”

Harvard coach Alex Gibby, Rojo, and Neville Anderson

Blanks had it and now the question is how much is left in his collegiate career. He said he will run the BU 5000m on December 7 for Harvard and then nothing is set. Several people indicated to us that will be Blanks’ final race in a Harvard singlet. Blanks already has an NIL with New Balance.

“From there, we’ll see what I want to do. I mean, you go to the BU Opener to get the indoor [qualifying] time, so, you guys interpret that as you will, but I’m still figuring it out,” he said. 

Blanks ran 13:03 to set the (since-broken) collegiate record at BU last year and is hoping for a fast rabbt as he will be aiming for the 2025 World Championship standard of 13:01.00.

Both of Blanks’ high school coaches, Geoffrey Walton and Neville Anderson, were in attendance and they said that Blanks without a doubt was mentally the strongest athlete they had ever coached.

*Mantz repeated twice in the same calendar year thanks to COVID

Ed Eyestone wraps one of the greatest years ever by an American distance coach by completing a historic NCAA XC sweep for BYU

The BYU men’s and women’s teams both won national titles on Saturday, marking the first time since Colorado in 2004 that the same school had swept the NCAA team titles. While the teams have different coaches, there is one big connection as Creed Thompson, who was 12th in the men’s race, is married to Carlee Hansen (65th overall, #5 scorer for the women’s team).

It was a huge day for BYU and a huge year for men’s head coach Ed Eyestone, who wrapped up one of the greatest years ever by an American distance coach. 2024 began with Eyestone’s marathoners Conner Mantz and Clayton Young going 1-2 at the Olympic Marathon Trials and it will end with the BYU men as NCAA cross country champions for the second time in six years.

“It’s been kind of a dream come true,” Eyestone said. “You work your whole career, and in coaching, anyway, it’s been 25 years. I ran 15 or 20 years as a pro before that. I would say that, yes, this has been a phenomenal year. And it’s been a phenomenal year because of the wonderful people I get to work with and the supporting staff that I have. Ryan Waite, my assistant coach, has really helped bring it to a new level as well.”

In the LetsRun preview, we wrote that if Oklahoma State ran to their potential, nobody was beating them. Eyestone agreed, but OK State was far from their best today and that left the door open for BYU.

“I think Oklahoma State, on paper, was the best team if you look at their guys and their PRs and their track stuff,” Eyestone said. “But this isn’t about what’s done on paper. It’s what’s done on the field on the given days…Things had to go our way and some of the other teams – at least Oklahoma State – had to have an off day.”

Eyestone’s strategy was for his guys to get out hard and for Casey Clinger to battle for a top finish while everyone else just tried to keep their position and kick it in. It didn’t go exactly to plan as BYU went out a little too hard, and some of their guys were bleeding places towards the end as a result. But they put themselves in position to win it and got it done by hanging tough at the end. Creed Thompson was the hero today, as he ran the race of his life to finish 12th overall after taking 11th at Big 12s three weeks ago.

It’s a testament to the depth and talent on this BYU roster that they had an Olympic steeplechaser (James Corrigan, their #1 at NCAAs last year) and former NXN champ (Aidan Troutner) not score for them today and they still won it all.

A smiling Eyestone also said he has drawn a little motivation from LetsRun.com in 2024. He noted that our own Robert Johnson listed Rooks’ chances of medalling at the Olympics at 1% or less and Eyestone watched the LetsRun.com NCAA preview show on Friday, where Rojo picked OK State for the win.  

“I went okay Robert, you didn’t have the most confidence in Kenneth Rooks and he ends up with an Olympic silver medal,” Eyestone said. “I gave him heck after that one. And then I was feeling a little bit nervous about Oklahoma State and them winning. But when he had such confidence that Oklahoma State was going to win, I said, so you’re saying we got a chance. So thank you Robert, for that inspiration.”

Habtom Samuel ran one of the gutsiest races in the history of the NCAA cross country meet

In order to win a race as competitive as the NCAA cross country championships, you really cannot afford for anything to go wrong. A poorly-timed injury, illness, or bad tactical decision have all been known to submarine championship dreams.

Today, New Mexico’s Habtom Samuel lost his shoe around 4k into the race. By the time he crossed the finish line, his other foot had been bloodied as well, and he said later that he required stitches. We saw him limping around on crutches afterwards.

With Samuel taking such a beating, you’d think his result would have suffered, but he ran an incredibly gutsy race and finished in the same place he did last year: 2nd overall. To do that on cold, muddy, uneven ground requires an insane level of toughness, but Samuel simply refused to give up and actually outkicked Furman’s Schubert for second in the final straight, pointing to his foot as he approached the finish line to let everyone know what had happened.

Samuel, who beat Blanks by more than six seconds on this course at Pre-Nats a month ago, only finished 1.7 seconds behind him today. Blanks was clearly better today than at Pre-Nats, but you’d have to like Samuel’s chances of winning had he kept both shoes on for the full 10k.

It snowed in Madison on Thursday morning, leaving the course in rough shape and covered by snow as the teams practiced on it that day. The course drained incredibly well over the ensuing two days as almost all of the snow was gone by Friday, but there were still some muddy spots that wreaked havoc with the race. In addition to Samuel losing his shoe, Iowa State’s Joash Ruto and OK State’s Fouad Messaoudi went down during the race, among others.

If it wasn’t for a fall, #4 Iowa State might have pulled off one of the greatest come-from-behind victories in NCAA history

BYU got out hard in this one and had just 47 points at 4k, while Iowa State was third with 160. Between 4k and 5k, disaster struck for Iowa State as freshman Joash Ruto, the 8:22 steepler who has only been on campus for a few months and was running just his second collegiate race, went down and lost a shoe, which he stopped to put back on. In the process, he lost 70 places and went from 13th to 83rd between 4k and 5k.

At that point, BYU had 86 and Iowa State had 201. But Ruto and Iowa State made a furious charge the rest of the way as their score would fall each km to 9k — to 169 at 6k, then 153 at 7k, 147 at 8k, and 135 at 9k. As this was happening, BYU’s score was creeping up to 92 at 7k, 94 at 8k, 108 at 9k, and 124 at the finish. In the end, Iowa State ran out of room.

Ruto got all the way back to 26th at 9k before fading to 34th at the finish. Had he run 8.7 seconds faster and finished 20th, Iowa State would have been your champs. Between 4k and 5k, Rutto lost just over 10 seconds.

Iowa State coach Jeremy Sudbury, who is only 35, talks about his team’s run below.

Oklahoma State falters a year after being perfect

Oklahoma State put on a performance for the ages last year at NCAAs, scoring 49 points. Four of their top five returned this year. Today their third guy scored 61 points himself. Sometimes it goes really wrong at NCAAs for a really good team and that happened today.

Oklahoma State coach Dave Smith didn’t know what went wrong but put it in perspective: “There’s no guarantees and this is why I talked about NAU being so incredible over the last eight years. To be as consistent as they were for that long (1st or 2nd eight straight years), it’s just mind-blowing. I’ve now had the chance to repeat, I guess, four times. I’ve only done it once (2009-2010) and I think it’s hard to do.” 

Smith continued, “What I can say is that last year this time, every guy on my team had the best day of the year and probably the best day of their career on this day. This day, no one had the best day of the season. And so, that’s systemic. There’s something I’ve done or something we did that put ourselves in a position where we weren’t ready to run today. Wish I knew [what it was]. It’s going to take some time going back and kind of looking at things and trying to figure out where we might have taken a wrong turn.”

Four of OSU’s top five are back next year, so the Cowboys will have a shot at redemption like the BYU women got today.

Wake Forest just missed out on the podium

The ACC champs Wake Forest were in the top four at 9k but fell back to 7th by the finish as sophomore stud Rocky Hansen, who went sub-4 in HS, lost 54 places in the final 1k, going from 46th to 100th.

At the ACC meet, Wake won despite the fact that Hansen was only 32nd. Wake coach John Hayes told us Hansen had heat stroke at that meet and his temperature went up to 106. Hayes said it wasn’t that hot at ACCs but they think Hansern’s body was fatigued from a virus two weeks earlier. He didn’t run regionals and almost didn’t run here but was almost able to pull off an All-American performance.

Gary Martin exceeded his expectations this year by winning ACCs and finishing 13th today

To say that the UVA junior hadn’t done well at his two previous NCAA XC races would be an understatement. He was 163rd in 2022 and 219th last year. Today he was 13th. He said at the beginning of the season, he was just hoping for top 40.

Parker Wolfe was pleased with his 7th-place showing today

Wolfe ends his NCAA XC career as a 4-time All-American as he was 28th in 2021 and 9th in 2022 and 2023.

Bob Liking had a career-best finish of 16th today

Liking, who is known as Big Ten Bob thanks to his four Big 10 titles, had historically not run great at NCAAs, having finished 66th in 2021, 34th in 2022, and 83rd last year. Today, he got into the top 20 for the first time and led the host Badgers to a surprise podium finish of 4th.

The Big 12 rules the conference rankings

It should come as no surprise that the Big 12 led the way in terms of producing the most All-Americans (top 40 finishes) as they had the top two schools in the NCAA this year and four of the top 19. Eleven of the top 40 came from Big 12 schools whereas the Big 10 only produced two.

All-Americans by conference

Harvard coach Alex Gibby

Discuss the 2024 NCAA XC championships on the LetsRun.com messagboard

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