CMS Men's Cross Country Earns Team Qualification to NCAA Championships

CLAREMONT, Calif. - The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men's cross country team earned a team qualification to the NCAA Division III Championships on Saturday in Lansing, Michigan, following its second-place finish at the NCAA West Regional on Saturday.

Only the regional champion gets an automatic qualification, and the Stags were in strong position for one of the 32 bids, entering the postseason ranked No. 16 nationally.  The second-place finish was more than enough to solidify the bid, as UC Santa Cruz and George Fox also got in from the region after finishing third and fourth, respectively. 

The USTFCCCA also officially announced its All-Region winners, and the Stags had six honorees, led by Henry Pick, who returned to form with a second-place finish. Pick won the SCIAC Championship last year, was second at regionals (behind teammate Stevie Steinberg), and then finished third at nationals, matching the second-highest individual finish for a CMS runner in program history. 

Pick was joined on the All-West Region team by top-10 finishers Adam Sage (sixth) and Miles Christensen (eighth), as well as Oliver Pick, Charles Albach, and Nick Taubenheim.

The Stags will be making their 14th straight team appearance at nationals, after earning a sixth-place finish a year ago. CMS was also sixth in the last race prior to COVID in 2019, when Thomas D'Anieri finished third, giving the Stags a third-place finisher in each of the last two seasons it competed.