Hutchinson's Mildred Rono Wins NJCAA D1 Women's Cross Country Individual National Title
Following years of close calls and national runner-up finishes for Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference women’s cross country runners, Hutchinson Community College freshman Mildred Rono ended a 10-year drought for the conference by winning the 2025 NJCAA Division 1 Women’s Cross Country Individual National Title at a snow-covered Lakeside Golf Course in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Saturday, November 8th.
After Blue Dragon Faith Jepchirchir finished as National Runner-up last year to give the KJCCC four national runner-up individuals since their last individual National Champion in 2014, Rono was able to deliver and cap off a historic first collegiate season by winning the 5,000 meter race wire-to-wire after holding the lead the entire race and building out what became a comfortable margin of over 41 seconds over national runner-up Juliana Sakat of Iowa Western by finishing with a time of 17:11.10. After being tied for the lead at the opening 1,000 meters with a time of 3:26.40, Rono opened a two second lead at the next 1,000-meter split and jumped out to a comfortable 14 second lead by the 3,000-meter split. Maintaining her 13-second lead heading into the final 1,000 meters of the race, Rono took no chances and kept her pace from the previous four splits while seeing every other runner begin to slow compared to the start of the race, as only four runners broke the 18 mark with their final times. Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, Rono’s time was just three seconds slower than last year’s National Title time that was run at Pole Green Park in Richmond, Virginia, and the fourth-best winning time since 2014.
As a team, Hutchinson also had the next two fastest times from the KJCCC, with Ashara Frater taking seventh (18:40.30) and Mali Lovett placing 17th (19:07.80) to finish third with 141 team points. Winning the 2025 National Title as a team was Odessa College with 54 total points, followed by Iowa Western with 127 total points. Other individual runners from the conference to finish in the top 25 included Elizabeth Hernandez of Butler with an 18th-place finish (19:14.12), Garden City’s Meryeme Mai in 20th (19:15.80), and Cloud County’s Mercy Angaamchaab, who took 23rd (19:23.40).
In the NJCAA Division 2 Women’s Cross Country Championship race, the KJCCC was represented by Cowley College, as the Tigers tied for third place in the final team scoring after finishing with 220 points. Leading the way for Cowley was an 11th-place individual finish from Linda Flipova who ran inside the top 20 throughout the duration of the race and worked her way up to her final finishing spot with a time of 19:39.30. The next highest finisher for the Tigers was Zuzana Bokova in 42nd with a time of 20:52.20 followed by a 48th place finish from Pauline Althoff (21:06.40). The third-place finish for Cowley was their fifth straight finish inside the top 10 dating back to 2020 and best finish outside of their National Championships in 2020 and 2023.