Jane Hedengren looks to make history as first freshman in 40 years to win NCAA women’s XC title

As he emerged from his team’s tent and began his walk to the start line at last week’s NCAA Mountain Regional in Salt Lake City, New Mexico cross country coach Darren Gauson saw BYU coach Diljeet Taylor doing the same. Gauson coaches Pamela Kosgei, the reigning NCAA champion at 5,000 and 10,000 meters, and knew there was only one athlete in the race with a chance of beating her on that day: BYU superfrosh Jane Hedengren. Knowing that both women would have a harder, more important race eight days later at NCAAs, Gauson went to Taylor with a proposal.

“I’m like, hey, we’ve gotta tell these guys just to not kill each other today,” Gauson says. “…We’ve just gotta tell them to roll together.”

Taylor wasn’t exactly receptive. She knew something that Gauson would soon learn: Jane Hedengren is a force of nature. You can only keep her contained for so long until the dam breaks and the greatness spills forth. In Salt Lake City, the dam lasted two kilometers. Hedengren and Kosgei had already put 12 seconds on the field by that point. A kilometer later, Hedengren had 13 seconds on Kosgei, a lead that would stretch to 42 by the time Hedengren crossed the finish line in 19:06.6 for the 6k course.

At which point, it was time for the latest installment of the armchair cross country fan’s favorite game during the 2025 season: Just how good is Jane Hedengren?

Even Taylor, who has coached 2021 individual champion Whittni Morgan and two NCAA championship teams, is still trying to get a grasp on the answer. Hedengren has won her three races this year by an average of 37 seconds, and Kosgei is not the only strong runner she has beaten. The runner-up at the Big 12 Championships was Joy Naukot of West Virginia — who finished 3rd in the NCAA 10,000m final in June and owns a personal best of 31:34. Hedengren beat her by 44 seconds.

(Editor’s note: Morgan won her three XC races in 2021 by a combined total of 12.4 seconds) 

Given the varying courses and conditions, cross country performances do not lend themselves to apples-to-apples comparisons. Even more so when the margins are that big and there is no one to push you.

So sometimes Taylor, like the rest of us, must rely on context clues. When I ask Taylor how hard Hedengren pushed at regionals, she begins her answer by noting that Hedengren stopped to fix her hair a few strides after crossing the finish line.

“It’s hard to gauge if you’re going all-out when the effort is solo and you’re winning by such a big margin,” Taylor says. “I think it’s even hard for her to gauge, because I’m asking her the same question: how all-out is that?”

Upon reflection, Taylor says, regionals was a “very hard effort.”

“That was not a jog in the park,” Taylor says. “You don’t run those splits at altitude and not be putting out a good, solid effort.”

Only one freshman woman has won the NCAA cross country individual title — NC State’s Suzie Tuffey in 1985. If Hedengren is to become the second on Saturday at the NCAA championships in Columbia, Mo., she will have to get past her biggest challenge yet: Alabama’s Doris Lemngole. A 23-year-old Kenyan, Lemngole won the NCAA XC title last year in Madison and added the NCAA indoor 5,000 crown in March. But Lemngole’s best event is the steeplechase, where she ran 8:58 to shatter the NCAA record in June, ultimately placing 5th at the World Championships in Tokyo in September.

Usually, it would be blasphemy to suggest a 19-year-old American freshman could hang with a runner as talented as Lemngole. But, as the running world has discovered in 2025, Hedengren is not your typical freshman.

“[She] has definitely levelled up”

So far, Hedengren has dominated collegiate competition in much the same way she dominated high schoolers during a 2024-25 campaign for the ages. During the 2024 cross country season, she ran 16:32.7 to break the 5k course record at Nike Cross Nationals, winning by over 40 seconds. On the track last spring, she ran national high school records in the mile (4:23.50), 3,000 (8:40.03), 2-mile (9:17.75), and 5,000 (14:57.93), all of which are close to the collegiate records for those distances.

It was hardly a shock when Hedengren, who attended Timpview High School in Provo, Utah, decided to take her talents five minutes down the road and commit to Brigham Young; her brother, Isaac, runs for the BYU men’s team, and her father, John, was an All-American at BYU (his best NCAA finish: 37th in 2000) and is now a chemical engineering professor at the school.

Taylor knew coming in that she was dealing with one of the most talented American distance prospects ever. What she didn’t know is just how quickly Hedengren would adapt to collegiate training.

“People have seen what Jane did in high school, and those are good times,” Taylor says. “I’ve coached women with those times before — everything she did in high school, I’ve got women who have run those times, the 8:40, the sub-15:00.

Hedengren won the NCAA Mountain Regional by 42 seconds

“This is totally different. She’s adapted really well in the last two and a half months to the intensity of the training and the structure of the training and has definitely levelled up.”

Taylor did not want to put a number on exactly how fast she believes Hedengren could run for 5,000 meters. But she is confident that Hedengren can run faster right now than any runner she has ever coached — and that includes Morgan, a 2024 Olympian who owns a personal best of 14:48.

(Be sure to come back to LetsRun.com each and every day this week for more coverage including individual previews, women’s previews and a free prediction contest that will be up soon. We’ll also be doing live video shoes from Columbia. Join the Supporters Club to catch them on demand as a podcast)

Less is more

It is not uncommon for a freshman to make a big leap in their first season in college by upping their mileage, but that is not how Hedengren has improved. Taylor says that in terms of mileage, intensity, and threshold work, she has never had an athlete enter her program from high school doing as much as Hedengren was last year. Taylor believes that if she were to use that as a starting point for Hedengren’s college training, injury would have inevitably followed.

“In order for me to build off what she did in high school, it’s not sustainable,” Taylor says. “It’s not possible from a health standpoint.”

So Taylor has scaled things back. Hedengren runs fewer miles now (in the 50s per week) than she did as a high school senior, though the intensity is a bit higher. She has also scaled back Hedengren’s cross-training, which was significant, though Hedengren, like most of the BYU team, still does regular pool work.

Taylor knows that, as a young athlete, it can be scary to move away from what has been working for you, especially when the change requires doing less. But she says Hedengren has been very coachable. And the growing pains that come with changing to a different system have been largely absent.

“As an athlete, you always think to be better, you have to do more,” Taylor says. “So just shifting that mindset to hey, this is the way we’re going to do it, she was really receptive to it. And obviously after racing at Gans Creek for Pre-Nats (where Hedengren won by 23 seconds), [her thought] probably was like, Oh, okay. This is working.“

What if it comes down to a kick?

Considering Hedengren won last year’s high school nationals by 40 seconds and has won her collegiate races by an average of 37 seconds, Taylor is not afraid to offer a hint about Hedengren’s game plan on Saturday. She is not going to be trying to sit and kick her way to the title.

“Her comfort isn’t racing in a sit-and-kick style,” Taylor says. “That’s something we may work on in years to come, because at the global level, you’ve got to have lots of tools in her racing toolbox. But right now, my advice to her at nationals is not gonna be sit in 5th and try to go with 2000 meters left.”

But blowouts at NCAA XC are relatively rare nowadays. In the last 17 years, Parker Valby in 2023 is the only woman to have won NCAAs by 10+ seconds. How will Hedengren fare if it comes down to a kick?

Taylor says she has been impressed with how Hedengren has been closing workouts alongside BYU’s #2 runner Riley Chamberlain, who has anchored the Cougars to back-to-back NCAA titles in the distance medley relay.

“Sometimes Riley will run different paces at the beginning, but Riley is a closer,” Taylor says. “Riley has a great kick, she’s a 1:59 800 runner. And her and Jane are stride for stride [at the end of workouts].”

That gives Taylor confidence in Hedengren, should Saturday’s race come down to the final meters.

Playing the long game

Hedengren is not the only person who has had to deal with expectations this season. Taylor has coached NCAA champions and Olympians, but there is something different about being entrusted with the future of perhaps the greatest female long-distance prospect the country has ever seen. The word Taylor uses when describing the task of coaching Hedengren is intentionality. She is hoping Hedengren can lead BYU to its second consecutive NCAA cross country team title on Saturday. But Taylor knows that every decision she makes with Hedengren could have ripple effects years down the line. The history of American distance running is littered with prospects who began brightly as teens yet fizzled out by their 20s.

“I strongly feel that this is a generational talent and I want to make sure, as a coach, that I have a responsibility of getting the most out of it in the right way,” Taylor says. “And that means never sacrificing long-term success for short-term gratification…Part of my job this year was, look, we want this thing to be sustainable, right? It’s really important for me that November 22 doesn’t define Jane’s collegiate career and that 2028 does.”

Taylor has already started to think about next steps beyond Saturday’s NCAA meet. The US cross country championships are on December 6, and Hedengren would be a strong threat to make the senior team for January’s World Cross Country Championships in Tallahassee (Hedengren turns 20 next year so would not be eligible for the U20 race at World XC). But Taylor said that race is not on their radar. Hedengen will plan to race a 5,000 at Boston University that weekend instead, then take some time off before gearing up for the 2026 track season.

“We’re going to stay in college and do the collegiate thing,” Taylor says of the decision to skip USA/World XC. “We want to stay in the NCAA, get a lot of experience for her. This is a new step, the stepping stone from being at the top of the high school level, taking the next step up and really being present in college.”

(Editor’s addition: We talked about Hedengren doing World XC at length on this week’s Track Talk podcast. Former NCAA coach Robert Johnson says if the goal is intentionality, how about this: Have Hedengren run USA XC and World XC and then skip indoors entirely. There is no need for a 19-year-old to have three peaks — XC, indoor and outdoors. Let her just have two.)

When it comes to developing generational prospects, the long-term approach is usually best. But when it comes to appreciating them, it is worth remaining in the present. On Saturday, running fans will get to see a 19-year-old American freshman try to win the NCAA cross country title. It has been 40 years since the last one, and who knows how long until the next one. This opportunity does not come around often. Try to savor it.

“This is something that’s very exciting for distance running in the US,” says Taylor. “And I know that. She knows that.”

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The history Jane Hedengren is chasing on Saturday

The last 10 American women to win NCAA XC

The 10 largest margins of victory at NCAA XC

The one freshman woman to win NCAA XC

NCAA XC margins of victory since 2000

(Be sure to come back to LetsRun.com each and every day this week for more coverage including individual previews, women’s previews and a free prediction contest that will be up soon. We’ll also be doing live video shoes from Columbia. Join the Supporters Club to catch them on demand as a podcast)