2025 NCAA XC regional analysis: Jane Hedengren is the NCAA favorite, Stanford men’s 31-year NCAA streak ends

The 2025 NCAA cross country regional championships are in the books, which means we can project the fields for the 2025 NCAA cross country championships, which will be held on November 22 in Columbia, Mo. You can find the projected men’s qualifiers here and the projected women’s qualifiers here.

Below, we analyze the biggest takeaways from Friday’s action, highlighted by another monster victory from BYU freshman phenom Jane Hedengren.

*Full results from every regional

Jane Hedengren will carry a perfect record into her first NCAA XC championships

Sometimes coaches of top teams will rest younger athletes at regionals to keep them fresh for NCAAs, but BYU true freshman Jane Hedengren raced at the Mountain regional on Friday and ran 19:06.6 for the 6k course (at altitude in Salt Lake City) to win by 42 seconds. It marked the third time Hedengren has raced this fall, and in all three, she has won by colossal margins.

Hedengren’s winning margin is even more impressive when you consider who she beat. The runner-up on Friday was New Mexico’s Pamela Kosgei, who was 2nd at NCAA XC last year and swept the 5k and 10k at the NCAA outdoor championships in June. And Hedengren beat her by forty-two seconds.

Regional results can be tough to interpret because you never know exactly how hard everyone is running. But it’s not as if Kosgei just chose to run with the pack the entire time. She and Hedengren had a 12-second gap on the field by 2k; by 3k, Hedengren had put 13 seconds on Kosgei and was on her way to a huge win.

Hedengren will be tested at NCAAs by reigning champion Doris Lemngole of Alabama, who has a fearsome kick and whom Hedengren has yet to race in 2025. But if Hedengren drops the field early as she has in her other races this year, it may not matter. It has been 40 years since a freshman woman has won the NCAA XC title, but at this point, Hedengren has to be viewed as the NCAA favorite.

Another individual win by Jane Hedengren with a 19:06.6!!! pic.twitter.com/tPyhidvAq3

— BYU Track & Field/Cross Country (@BYUTFXC) November 14, 2025

Discuss Hedengren’s performance on the LetsRun messageboard:

MB Jane Hedengren annihilates the field at NCAA D1 Mountain Regional
MB Did Jane Hedengren make a HUGE MISTAKE by running regionals too hard?
MB Disagree with JG, Jane is the favorite

The Stanford men are set to miss nationals for the first time since 1993

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2025 has been a year to forget for the Stanford men. They were ranked #6 in the preseason coaches’ poll in August, but have steadily slid down the rankings since then. Stanford finished 16th at the Nuttycombe Invitational and just 7th at ACCs, which meant they were not even ranked in the top 30 in the country heading into regionals.

Still, Stanford had a chance to make it to NCAAs with a strong run at the West regional in Sacramento. And with just half a mile to go in today’s race, Stanford was in 5th, 10 points ahead of 6th-place Portland. If Stanford could just hold that position, Stanford would get in as an at-large team and push in fourth-place Boise State as well.

Instead, Stanford lost two places and Portland picked up 10 places over the final 800, allowing Portland to leapfrog Stanford into 5th by two points, 151-153. As a result, Stanford, Boise State, and Portland all missed out from making nationals as Portland blocked Stanford from pushing in Boise State.

Stanford entered this season with the second-longest active streak of qualifying for NCAAs, with 31 straight bids (Colorado, who made it today, have the longest streak at 34). That streak is now snapped as the Cardinal will miss out for the first time since 1993.

Stanford caught a couple of bad breaks as Lex Young (their top man at NCAAs last year) hasn’t run all season and Paul Bergeron (their #5 last year as a true freshman) has not raced since September. Despite those absences, it is stunning to see a team with Stanford’s history and resources not even make it to nationals.

The Cardinal will still have one men’s representative in Columbia, however, as Leo Young was 3rd at the West regional and earned an individual berth at nationals. The Stanford women extended their NCAA stream to 33 years.

More: Longest NCAA cross country streaks in history

South Carolina and LSU women made it to NCAAs as a team for the first time

Congrats to both programs, neither of which are traditional powers in XC. LSU was led to NCAAs by a Japanese runner, Yuya Sawada. Sawada, who ran 4:12 for 1500 in 2022 to finish 6th at World Jrs, really struggled last year as a freshman at LSU. She only ran 4:20 for 1500 and was only 112th at SECs in XC and 76th at regionals. Today, she led LSU to a 2nd place finish in the South Central with a 5th place finish after finishing 15th at SECs.

For the first time in program history, LSU XC is heading to the NCAA Championships with an auto-bid! 🐯#GeauxTigers pic.twitter.com/z8cJdLErJP

— LSU Track & Field (@LSUTrackField) November 14, 2025

The Arkansas women miss NCAAs for the first time since 2010

The Arkansas women are transitioning to a new era now that long-time coach Lance Harter is no longer in charge (after retiring in June of 2023, he actually came back on an interim basis last fall). At the South Central regional, they failed to make it to NCAAs for the first time since 2010. Texas A&M (71) and LSU (86) took the top 2 spots, while Arkansas was a distant 4th with 127. Arkansas not making it wasn’t a surprise as they were just 14th at the SEC meet under new coach Marc Burns.

The Alabama women got a bit of a scare despite a 1-2-3 finish

In a cross country dual meet, if you go 1-2-3 you automatically win but that’s not true in a big meet like regionals. Just ask the Alabama women.

At the South regional, #15 Alabama went 1-2-3 up front but their 4th and 5th were way back in 59th and 60th in the team scoring. As a result, they tied with Mississippi State for 3rd in the team scoring with 125 behind #3 Florida (52) and unranked Tennessee (101).

Alabama didn’t run Pre-Nats or Nuttycombe and while they did run the Gans Creek Classic at the end of September on the NCAA course, they didn’t do well as their superstar, Doris Lemngole, wasn’t competing yet. She was still taking a break after running in the World Championships for Kenya. That left Alabama in a slightly vulnerable position, but the Crimson Tide picked up five points for finishing 2nd at SECs (wins over Tennessee, Texas A&M, LSU, South Carolina, and Missouri) and that was enough to nab an at-large bid.

It was a great day for runners from Kenya

At the Midwest regional, Kenyans went 1-2-3 in both the men’s and women’s races. At the South regional, they went 1-2-3-4-5 in the women’s race and 1-2-3-4 in the men’s race. At the South Central, Kenyan women took 9 of the top 11 places and went 1-2-3-4-5 in the men’s race. They also managed 1-2 finishes in both the men’s and women’s races in the West. In all, Kenyans won 11 of the 18 regional races contested on Friday.

Which ranked teams missed out?

On the women’s side, five teams ranked in the top 30 in the most recent coaches’ poll failed to make the meet:

Top women’s teams to miss 2025 NCAAs

#23 Michigan State (4th at Great Lakes)
#28 Gonzaga (8th at West)
#29 Duke (6th at Southeast)
#30 Tulane (3rd at South Central)

If you go back to the preseason poll in August, the highest-ranked team to miss out was #17 Michigan State. The coaches did a pretty good job predicting things if the top 16 teams in the preseason all wound up making it to NCAAs.

On the men’s side, there were only two teams ranked in the top 30 in the most recent coaches’ poll who missed out: #20 Tulsa (4th in the Midwest) and #29 Boise State.

Looking at the preseason poll, the highest team to miss out on the men’s side was #6 Stanford, followed by #21 Washington.

You can discuss all of Friday’s regional action on the LRC messageboard

MB Official 2025 NCAA XC Regional live discussion thread + Live NCAA big dance announcement show at 2 pm ET