Army West Point Athletics
Army West Point
NCAA Northeast Regional Championships
Davis Qualifies for NCAA Cross Country Championships; Army Men & Women Place Top-12 in Northeast Region
November 15, 2024 | Men's Cross Country, Women's Cross Country
The men's side placed 12th overall out of 38 teams competing in the 10K format while the women landed in seventh place out of 39 programs running a 6K.
MEN'S RESULTS | WOMEN'S RESULTS
Davis will be the first Black Knight to compete at he NCAA cross country meet since Marshall Beatty in the 2020 season (cross country championship was run in the spring of 2021). His sixth-place finish came with a mark of 30:05.34 as he was third in his class to cross the finish line.
Charlotte Richman's 31st-place finish marked the highest-ever from a woman in program history.
Anthony Diaz came in next for the Black Knights on the men's side with a 40th-place finish (31:01.61) followed by Gavin Hansen (71st, 31:27.56). Army's contingent continued with more underclassmen as Adam Furman (88th, 31:46.89), Maximus Haynia (165th, 32:55.52) and Ben Sydell (168th, 32:57.44) also placed.
The women's side saw a significant jump from last season's 14th-place finish in the region, led by Charlotte Richman and Mikayla Cheney who finished in 31st and 33rd, respectively, with times of 20:45.33 and 20:48.32.
Army's depth proved to be the difference in this season's improvement, as Louisia Diamond (39th, 20:53.93) also landed in the top-40. Ava Bushaw (66th, 21:23.73), Leah Richardson (87th, 21:36.73), Laurynn Sisneros (95th, 21:42.25) and Joanna Halfhill (124th, 22:03.76) rounded out the Army squad.
Davis will head to Verona, Wisconsin for the NCAA Championships with competition set for next Saturday, November 23rd from the Thomas Zimmer Championship Course.
Hear from Coach Smith:
Men's Meet
"Our men's team finish today was a little disappointing. 12th was similar to what we achieved a year ago and we had hopes of cracking the top 10. But we are young team and will return the entire top 7 next year and hope to have a better outcome. I thought Anthony Diaz '25 was very good today. He has done a nice job all year of establishing consistency in his performance and today he put himself in the race and was rewarded with his best finish (40th) ever. Overall, the guys are a little disappointed in the final outcome but not discouraged. They know that what they have to do to improve. What Nathan Davis '25 did today is an entirely different story.
In the winter of 2021, Nathan Davis, a senior at Columbia high school in upstate New York, sat in my office with his parents and asked me if he could walk-on to our cross-country team. I was honest with him in my assessment of his high school record. I told him that I could not let him join our team unless he ran faster. He had recently finished 55th at the New York state meet having run 17:27 for the 5k. His track personal best times of 4:23 for the mile and 9:36 for the 2 mile were not were not worthy of division 1 interest. I had seen him run some cross-country races that fall and he struggled to compete with the top guys in the state. He had been recruiting himself to West Point all fall and I had largely ignored him. I was waiting for him to do something that would justify a roster spot at the Academy. Sitting across from my desk in the track office, he asked me what he needed to do. I told him that I would not support his application for admission unless he ran 4:18 during the indoor season. Upon hearing that, he said nothing, looked down for a long moment then returned to my gaze and said, "ok". That was it. Nathan is a man of few words and if you don't know him well you might mistake his pensive countenance for a guy that just doesn't care or does not understand what you said. The opposite is true.…he is a man of few words but capable of deep thought. He is measured in what he says choosing to say only what is important and then committed to equaling words with deeds. As we closed that meeting, he was convinced that he would meet my standard. He didn't need to say anything more. Within a month, he had met the standard. In January of 2022, he ran 4:18 indoors for the mile and by the end of the spring track season, he had lowered his personal best to 4:13 and claimed 4th place at the New York state meet. We took Nathan onto the team. I have been an NCAA coach for 31 years and I still have a lot to learn. With Nathan, I have learned to never underestimate the power of determination. We seem to get a lot of kids here in our program that don't jump off the radar with talent but possess incredible discipline and willpower. Talent will only take you so far but combine talent with will and you have elite potential. Nathan is talented for sure. His high school performances were achieved on a very thin training schedule. Now, with physical maturity, a much more developed capacity for training and an elite level of committed determination, we are seeing the emergence of one of the great distance talents ever to come through the Academy gates. He is just getting started. Nathan said to me earlier this week that he was going to qualify for the NCAA cross country championship. And today, at the NCAA Northeast regional, he did exactly what he said he would do. His 6th place finish today is the #2 all-time finish at the regional meet by an Army runner, second only to Roman Ollar's 3rd place finish in 2018. His time of 30:05 is the fastest time ever run by an Army man at the Northeast regional ever. That goes back 27 years to the inception of this qualifying concept in 1997. t was an historic run for Nathan. A year ago at this meet, he finished 75th. Of all the runners that finished the race today, none improved more than Nathan Davis from last year to this year. Nathan took on a new athletic persona this fall. It started in August when he returned from the summer break. He was at a new level in his training and was a commanding presence at every practice. At each meet this fall, he has been our number one man…without fail. We knew going into today that he would have a legitimate chance to qualify for the NCAA championship given how he had been performing. Four individuals qualify for the NCAA meet from each region. They are the first four finishers that are not on a qualifying team. Nathan is either the fourth qualifier if only two teams (Syracuse and Harvard) advance to the NCAA meet or he is the 2nd individual qualifier from our region if any other teams advance (Cornell and Iona). Either way, he is guaranteed a spot in the race in Wisconsin next weekend. The course was laid out on a 2-kilometer loop with one challenging hill that came at the beginning of each of the 5 loops that the men ran today. This race is often a tactical race for the first half and then things get going over the last half of the race. We knew that the race would be hard and fast early and then it would settle down as the players jockeyed for position. Several teams had earned enough at large points throughout the year to feel confident that they would be in the NCAA meet if they managed the race effort today. Syracuse, Iona, and Harvard were the team favorites, and their top individuals dominated the early going of the race setting a controlled tempo and measuring their effort. The most elite guy was Graham Blanks from Harvard. Fresh off of making the US Olympic team this summer in the 5000 meters, Blanks is eyeing another NCAA title this fall. Nathan knew Blanks was the top dog in the race and he latched on to him and ran right on his hip almost the entire race. The pace was steady and the top runners were spread 5 abreast all measuring their effort jockeying for position. Nathan was in the top 10 from the gun and Anthony Diaz '25 was right there hovering in the top 15. "Anthony was there and that was a reassuring feeling. I felt a sense of let's go ". Nate went on to say, 'I felt confident after the way I ran at the conference meet and told myself I am going for it now. I feel like at West Point, we go through stuff that no other kid does. We have a lot more on our plate than other collegiate athletes. So, I felt like there was no reason that I could not run with any of those guys. So, that is what I did. I was relaxed for almost the entire race. I almost felt too good. I was just trying to stay attached to Blanks and the Iona guys. I let other people do the work of leading the race on the hill and in the wind. The whole time I was just waiting for the race to break open. I knew it was going to go at some point and I had to be ready. I felt the pace quicken right before the last loop. That was a little over a mile from the finish line and I felt good enough to go with it. Going up the hill with a mile left I was locked in. All the hills that we have done this fall came full circle. I was prepared to respond'.
Over the last loop Nathan solidified his position and challenged for a top 5 spot with 400 to go only yielding a little ground in the final straight. Nathan is the 6th individual NCAA qualifier from our men's program dating back to 1996 when we last qualified a team for the meet. He is the first Army qualifier to the meet since Marshall Beatty advanced in 2020-21. Now he faces another great challenge. He will be competing at the 2nd best cross country meet in the world next weekend. He will face the best young American talent and the best young men from around the world. He is determined to do his best. I am certain that is what we will get from him." - Director of Track & Field Mike Smith
"We were as good as we have ever been today. We finished 7th in the team scoring. Our top two women finished higher than anyone from Army has ever finished at this meet. And yet, the mood of our women in the mixed zone beyond the finish line was sour. It was as if we had suffered a major defeat. And while it is true that we had higher expectations, I can't view it as a major disappointment. We just have to get better. We had our chances today. The race went out hard and fast. We knew that would happen and we went with it. There are at least four teams from this region that will make the NCAA meet. Providence, Syracuse, Boston College and Harvard were all positioned well to advance to Madison next weekend if they took care of business today. With two automatic qualifying spots on the line today, and four teams vying for those spots, we knew that the race was going to be a constant push from the gun as the top people tried to separate the field. True to that, the first mile was a very fast 5 minutes and 5 seconds. We anticipated this exact scenario and Charlotte Richman '26 went right with the pace. She settled into a spot in the top 15 and held onto it for the first two loops. On the third loop she started to struggle and gave up some ground but still had enough left to finish 31st and record the best individual finish ever for one of our women at this meet. In the end, she was disappointed in having not been able to crack the top 10 but I think it was a good learning experience for her and for us. We just have to get better. Mikayla Cheney '27 got out close to Charlotte and ended up running the best race of her life. Her 33rd place finish was an improvement on what she did a year ago, and is the 2nd best finish ever for an Army women at this meet. Her time of 20:48 was the best time she has ever run. She continues to impress with her in-race commitment, but it is her talent that is starting to surface. Today was her last cross-country race of the 2024 season but she leaves the season with a very clear indication of what we can expect in the future. She is good. Louisa Diamond '27 struggled to get out with the early fast pace but then recovered nicely and worked her way up through the field. If we had some more kilometers of racing today, she could have kept on rolling through the field of runners. But 6k is the distance. She has only been in a few high-level races and is learning on the fly how hard she has to push to compete with the top women out there. Today was a good learning experience. She knows that she has to get better. Ava Bushaw '27 was our number 4 today and ran a strong race. She told me earlier in the week that she wanted to get out hard and hang on to the pace. She did that today and she never backed down from the demanding pace. She had higher expectations of a top 40 finish and is not satisfied but I think she knows that she can improve and is willing to do the work to make that happen. She comes from a strong high school program in Texas and is comfortable with rising to a higher level. She told me after the race, "I will do whatever you want me to do to get better". Leah Richardson '26 was our 5th and final scorer today. She felt like she was hammering the pace the entire race. She was sick 2 weeks ago, has made a nice comeback in her training and ran a better race today than 2 weeks ago but I think she was a little disappointed in the final outcome. She will get better as we do some more training. Our final two finishers today were our two firstie women. Laurynn Sisneros '25 got out into the race today. She has found a new level of confidence in recent weeks and that was evident with her early position in the race. She battled all the way to the line. Joanna Halfhill '25 was our 7th runner today. She has had a remarkable career and closes it out as one of the most successful team captains in the history of the program. We had hopes of a top 5 team finish today. It wasn't in the cards. But our 7th place finish is the best finish in the history of the Army women's cross-country program. We can't lose sight of how far we have come and yet how far we still have to go. That should fuel these women as we look to the future. We have to get better." - Director of Track & Field Mike Smith
Players Mentioned
