KJCCC Men's Cross Country Runners Claim Two Individual NJCAA Cross Country Titles
On a snow-filled early November Saturday, Hutchinson Community College men's cross country runner Cornelius Kogo and Cowley College men's cross country runner Esteban Boisseau both etched their names into the National Junior College Athletic Association cross country record books by winning the 2025 NJCAA D1 and D2 men's cross country individual national titles at Lakeside Golf Course in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
With snow blanketing the course overnight Friday into Saturday morning, runners were forced to endure conditions that they had likely not seen all year long, with both cold temperatures and driving snow making for a picturesque view of the course. The Division 1 men's race began at 12 PM following the conclusion of the Division 3 championship races that took place earlier in the morning, with Kogo and teammate Titus Kiprotich both setting the pace from the start as the duo were never lower than third in any of the seven 1,000-meter splits that were marked throughout the race. Heading into the final 1,000 meters of the race, the two were separated by a mere 0.3 seconds and a full 20 seconds ahead of the next closest competitor as both made the most of the opportunity to have another one-two finish like they had just two weeks prior at the 2025 NJCAA Region 6 Cross Country Championships. With Kogo pulling ahead down the stretch towards the finish line, the sophomore crossed the line with a time of 24:54.70 to finish as the only runner in any of the three 8K championship races on Saturday to break the 25-minute mark, while Kiprotich earned national runner-up status with a time of 25:02.70.
Three more Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference runners left their marks on the race by securing top 10 finishes as Sfiso Makolomakwa earned a sixth-place finish (25:29.90) to edge out Blue Dragon Dennis Cheruiyot who finished seventh with a time of 25:30.60 while Grizzly Emmanuel Otim took 10th with a time of 25:33.70. The trio of Blue Dragon runners in the top 10 helped Hutchinson earn a National Runner-Up team finish, totaling 69 points to trail only National Champion and host Iowa Central Community College who placed all five scoring runners in the top 22 to win the event with 58 total points. Tied for third in the team scoring was Butler with 144 points, as the Grizzlies finished tied with Snow College of Utah, while the Colby cross country team had three runners finishing in the top 50 and earning a ninth-place team finish with 280 points.
Having to endure the elements and wait to race in the final of the six races taking place on Saturday, Boisseau did not let a fast pace to the start of the race affect his strategy going in, as the sophomore made up over three minutes between the first 1,000-meter split and the final 7,000 meters of the race. Slowly working his way through the field after being in 259th place at the first timing split, Boisseau picked up 40 spots to sit in 219th at the halfway point of the race before beginning to make his move over the back end of the race by climbing up to 115th at the 6,000 meter split and eventually make his way to the lead pack that had been a trio of runners from Lansing Community College and a runner from Paradise Valley Community College. After closing in, Boisseau made his final move of the race to grab the lead spot in the field of 343 runners and work his way into the final stretch where he continued to set the winning pace to finish with a time of 26:15.80 and finish nearly 12 seconds ahead of Nate Carmody from Lansing who spent the entire race no lower than third in the field.
Joining Boisseau in the top 10 from Cowley was Alexis Realland as the sophomore took a very similar path to a sixth-place finish by making big gains over the final 3,000 meters of the race to go from 270th at the 5,000-meter mark to his final position with a time of 26:41.50. As the lone KJCCC school in the NJCAA Division 2 Championship race, the Tigers also got a pair of top 100 finishes from Wilson Navarrate and Samuel Lovell in the scoring to finish eighth as a team with 298 points for their second-straight eighth-place team finish at the National Championship meet.