For the first time in The Master’s University athletics history, a team has won the NAIA national championship. The women’s cross country team finished ahead of Taylor University by one point to win the NAIA women’s cross country national championship Friday, Nov. 22, at the Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia, Mo.

Hannah Fredericks finished second individually with a time of 20 minutes, 45.3 seconds on the 6K course. Ellen Palmgren finished eighth (21:08.6), Emma Nelson ninth (21:11.2), Suzie Johnson 37th (21:47.1) and Rebekah Niednagel 42nd (21:54.8). In addition to those five scoring athletes, Ella Howe finished 81st and Alyssa Lovett 95th.

“I feel like the Lord just blessed us more than we could have ever imagined,” Fredericks said after the race. “After finishing second last year we obviously wanted to come back and finish first this year. But we really wanted to see what the Lord would provide and not expect anything. We weren’t expecting the win but we wanted to try. So much happiness and joy right now, but it’s really all the Lord.”

The one-point margin of victory for the Mustangs over Taylor University was the closest margin of victory in NAIA cross country championship history.

Each placement of the five scoring runners for The Master’s mattered in this championship effort, but perhaps none greater than the fourth and fifth Mustangs runners, Suzie Johnson and Rebekah Niednagel. At the 4,000-meter checkpoint of the 6K race, Johnson was five points behind Taylor’s fourth runner and Niednagel was four points behind Taylor’s fifth runner. But when the two crossed the finish line, Johnson was four points ahead and Niednagel was two points ahead.

“Bekah came right up behind me and started pushing my back and saying, ‘We gotta go, we’ve got to stick together,'” Johnson said. “The difference for me was Bekah. If I did not have her, I would not have been able to finish where I did.”

“Going into the second loop I thought to myself, ‘Shoot, I’m number five,'” Niednagel said. “I knew my time was really going to matter and I knew Suzie was hurting. And as I came up on her I knew I had to push her more. I had to act as if I was okay because if I fall off, she’s going to be hurting more. So I knew I had to give it my all for this team. I knew I had to go and I had to push her. And being able to run it with her was just so sweet.”

Johnson admitted, “I was hurting.”

“Just knowing that she was there with me gave me the confidence that I wasn’t alone,” Johnson continued. “My prayer request this morning was that I would be able to love my teammates well, and the Lord definitely gave us an opportunity to love each other well by keeping us side by side.”

Under a gray Missouri sky with temperatures hovering around 40 degrees, the Gans Creek course was soggy in spots after a recent rainstorm.

But that didn’t matter to the athletes from Southern California.

The Master’s men’s cross country team finished fourth in their race, with Jack Anderson coming in fourth place individually with a time of 23:47.5 on the 8K course, his highest finish at the NAIA national championships.

“I didn’t get a great start,” Anderson said immediately after the race. “I got boxed in and had to deal with that through the first half of the race. But I had to put my trust in the Lord and know that whatever the outcome it was all in His sovereign plan. I just had to trust Him in that moment and thankfully He gave me the strength to get past the people I needed to get past and get to where I needed to be at the end of the race.”
Connor Ybarra finished 24th (24:30.0), Emmanuel De Leon 59th (24:55.2), Nate Day 62nd (24:55.9) and Hunter Romine 83rd (25:04.0). In addition to those scoring athletes, Andrew Cross finished 94th (25:08.1) and Cedar Collins 95th (25:08.5).

First-year head coach Daniel Rush was named the NAIA women’s cross country coach of the year, the youngest coach at 23 years of age in the history of the award.

Rush talked through strategy with both teams before their respective races.

“The men’s race and the women’s race ran a little bit different,” Rush said. “You have to manage the biggest and most competitive crowd we’ve had all year. Which means, staying calm when you’re in 150th when you’re 800 meters in. The goal was to get our top couple of guys out front and then our four, five and six be a little more patient and settle in a little further behind. Ultimately, the objective for the men was to find a place where we wanted to finish by the 4K point.

“For the women, it was a little bit different,” Rush continued. “It’s not as dense as a race. So you normally will find the place you’re going to finish in by about 1K to 2K.”

Which made the effort by Johnson and Niednagel all the more remarkable.

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