Oklahoma State men's and women's teams fall short in NCAA cross country championships

STILLWATER — Rory Leonard joked he and his teammates have lived like Shaman monks for the past three or four months.

“In bed at 8 p.m., waking up at 5 a.m,” Leonard said. “Getting to practice for 6 a.m. Going out and running at least 10 miles a day, and then doing workouts on top of that.”

Leonard, an OSU sophomore, might get more sleep with Saturday’s race behind him. But rest could be difficult. OSU coach Dave Smith said he knows what he will mull when his head hits the pillow in the coming days.

“All this came down to a loss by a tenth of a second,” Smith said.

Oklahoma State hosted the 2022 NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships on Saturday morning at the Greiner Family OSU Cross Country Course. Both OSU’s men’s team, ranked No. 4, and women’s team, ranked No. 3, were contenders to win a national championship. Both teams fell just short.

The Cowboys finished second, losing a 3-2 tiebreaker to two-time defending-champion Northern Arizona Lumberjacks. It is the first time a tiebreaker has decided a champion.

As the colorful mass of runners completed the men’s 10K, times flooded in and were promptly displayed on a large videoboard. NAU and OSU, tied together at the top of the leaderboard, flipped positions multiple times.

At times, the hundreds of fans gathered around the finish line cheered as though OSU had won. The pattern of roars and groans was confusing.

“We won and lost like four times on my walk back up here,” Smith said.

NAU’s Nico Young and Drew Bosley finished second and third behind Charles Hicks, the individual champion representing Stanford. OSU’s Alex Maier, fourth, Isai Rodriguez, eighth and Fouad Messaoudi, 12th, were the Cowboys’ top finishers.

The tiebreaker evaluated the placement OSU and NAU’s five best runners. The Lumberjacks finished 2-3-18-24-36, besting the Cowboys’ 5-8-11-29-30 finish. Tennessee’s Dylan Jacobs edged out Maier by 0.2 seconds. If that race, or a couple others decided by similarly slim margins, flipped, the Cowboys would have won.

Smith said the result was painful, but he was pleased with the Cowboys’ performance.

“I’m super proud of the guys,” Smith said. “I was telling the guys earlier. We drew up a plan that we thought was a really good plan. And it was executed absolutely perfectly. Exactly what we asked the guys to do, they did. Even exceeded our expectations.”

The Cowgirls, seeking OSU’s first women’s NCAA title, finished fourth with 201 points. NC State, which had the top two individual runners including champion Katelyn Tuohy won with a score of 114.

“The women won the first trophy in team history,” Smith said. “We’ve never won a top-four podium finish before. Proud of them. We had bigger dreams and bigger goals but still, we came a long way this year.”

Freshman phenom Natalie Cook, who entered the 6K with a goal of finishing tenth or better, finished seventh to lead OSU.

“I knew the last 2K was going to be really hard,” Cook said. “We’ve been practicing a lot finishing really well. I just tried my best to maintain my position and hopefully hang on to dear life.”

Leonard said despite the pain of their ultimate goal slipping away, his team will still celebrate second place.

“We’ve said all year around that there’s only one day that matters and that is today,” Leonard said. “I think everyone did what they could have done."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma State falls short in NCAA cross country championships