By David Melly and Audrey Allen.

Even the grumpiest of Scrooges must admit that this year’s NCAA Cross Country Championships did not disappoint. Both races featured multiple athletes who competed for their countries at the Paris Olympics, and both ended in exciting battles for the individual crown.

If you’re a Provo resident or big Diljeet Taylor stan, you probably ended the day saying “God bless us, every one.” Oklahoma State fans, on the other hand, are probably muttering “bah, humbug” as they mournfully pack away their orange body paint for another year (at least Oregon Ducks can rest on the laurels of their 11-0 football team… the Cowboys are DFL in the Big-12 at the moment, adding insult to injury).

Before we bid adieu to the fall season once and for all and get ready for the winter – entering our Thanksgiving food comas, dusting off the Christmas decorations, and shifting into soup mode – it’s worth one last visit with the ghosts of NCAAs past, present, and future as we reflect on the key takeaways from a stellar weekend in Wisconsin.

Ghosts of NCAAs Past:

– Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Graham Blanks wins the NCAA cross-country title with a decisive and unmatchable move in the final kilometer. The Harvard senior and 2024 Olympian beat the racing-like-a-dumbass allegations to become the 13th back-to-back champ in NCAA history. Blanks himself felt like he was racing a ghost – but that this year’s version was even better than the last.

– 2023 was a year to forget for the BYU women. The Cougars finished 14th after entering ranked No. 3. But under the steadfast guidance of head coach Diljeet Taylor, BYU bounced back (with many of the same players) to claim a sixth team title, with 147 points to second-place West Virginia’s 164. The Cougars’ top three had no trouble leaving their ghosts in the past, as Lexy Halladay-Lowry, Riley Chamberlain, and Carmen Alder all placed in the top 40, and posted an average year-over-year improvement of a whopping 160 places.

– Speaking of BYU, super-duper senior Casey Clinger has a long history with NCAA cross country. His first appearance at Nationals came way back in 2017 – yes, you read that correctly. The 26-year-old finished 6th, his highest of five NCAA XC appearances that span the better part of a decade (7th in 2022, 8th in November 2021, 13th in March 2021, and 24th in 2017). He keeps getting better with age!

Ghosts of NCAAs Present:

– Two teams that took “living in the moment” to a whole new level were the West Virginia Mountaineers and the Providence [Lady] Friars, both of whom annihilated their rankings and beat up on the competition to finish second and third on the podium. West Virginia entered ranked fourth and exceeded expectations to land just 17 points behind the champions. More importantly, they didn’t panic after getting out slower than envisioned, moving up from 7th place at 2km to land five places higher at the finish. But the biggest team surprise of the day goes to Providence, who entered the weekend at No. 11 and came out with a team trophy. The Friars’ formidable top three ended up being the difference maker – they were the only team in the field to put three runners in the top 25.

– After the BYU women set the bar as high as it can possibly be set, their male counterparts had their work cut out for them. And they adopted a fearless, high-stakes approach to getting the job done: going out hard and trying to control the race from gun to tape. The Cougars stayed in first place as a team at every 1km checkpoint, but they had to hold on for dear life in the second half as they lost a concerning 77 places from 4km to the finish. They ultimately succeeded in staving off runners-up Iowa State by 13 points in the end. What did it take? Wrist notes, dry-erase scoreboards, and… olive oil. It’s hard to tell if Coach Ed Eyestone was serious, but the details clearly made a difference for the Cougars.

– In case you were too distracted trying to figure out if your Wi-fi was cutting out or the stream was glitching in the final moments of the women’s race, here’s a refresher: Alabama’s Doris Lemngole clocked a 2:55.8 final kilometer en route to a national title, a kick so hard it matched the final split of men’s 11th-place finisher Denis Kipnegitch of OSU. Lemngole had the unfortunate luck of competing against Parker Valby a bunch of times last year and always finished runner-up, but she’s now a 2x champ after winning the steeplechase title at NCAA Outdoors.

Ghosts of NCAAs Future:

– The Lap Count has a time-honored tradition of calling our shots when it comes to cross country improvement driving future track success. We’ve got a simple but rock-solid hypothesis: If you were a second-team All-American type last spring and made a huge jump in XC this fall, there’s a good chance you’ve got a very, very impressive track season around the corner. So here’s a pre-emptive congratulations to Villanova’s Marco Langon, who finished 121st in 2022 and 146th in 2023 before jumping to 15th this year. He put together a strong campaign last spring, running 13:28.44 for 5000m and contributing to his team’s Penn Relays title over 4xmile, but his best finish at NCAAs on the track thus far is 14th. Expect a big leap forward this year.

– While it’s too premature to see how our homage to the 6k take aged, it’s notable that the Providence middle-distance duo of Kimberley May and Shannon Flockhart improved their cross country performances at NCAAs from 116th to 10th and 69th to 24th, respectively, following a year where they both were All-Americans in the indoor mile/outdoor 1500m. Also on our watchlist is Virginia’s Margot Appleton, who’s a repeat All-American in the mile/1500m/5000m and just added her first cross country certificate to that already stuffed trophy shelf.

– The future is very, very bright for Michigan State’s Rachel Forsyth, the true freshman who finished 16th overall in her first season as a Spartan. Forsyth ran with a maturity far beyond her years, as she hit 1km in 61st place then methodically moved up the field to land in the top 20.

– Another breakout star might be NC State redshirt sophomore Hannah Gapes, who improved from 73rd in 2023 to 8th on Saturday. The Kiwi hasn’t made an appearance at an NCAA championship on the track and “only” has PBs in the high-15s and mid-4:10s, but a top-10 performance in a deeper field on the grass smells a lot like potential.

– We’re getting déjà vu from the Olympic Trials as UNC’s Ethan Strand and Villanova’s Liam Murphy clearly like finishing side-by-side with an 8th and 9th place close in the men’s race, followed by Virginia’s Gary Martin in 13th (who improved 206 places from last year and is a certified cross country guy now). As many of these middle-distance stars have to be thinking about a future full of three-round competitions as a 1500m pro, building up the engine now isn’t a bad strategy.