CASCADE CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIPS
LC State Cross Country Trail | Lewiston, Idaho
10 a.m. Friday – Men's 8K
11: a.m. Friday – Women's 6K
Live Results | Meet Program  

ASHLAND — The Southern Oregon cross country teams travel to Lewiston, Idaho, for the Cascade Collegiate Conference Championships presented by U.S. Bank on the campus of Lewis-Clark State. 

The No. 3-ranked Raider men are favored to win their 8,000-meter affair, but they'll need to fend off a deep College of Idaho team and topple the defending champions in Eastern Oregon. 

In the women's 6,000-meter race, the Raiders look to increase their odds of securing an at-large bid to the national meet by upsetting ranked teams. 

The men's race begins at 10 a.m. on Friday and the women follow at 11 a.m. 

Format: The first five finishers for each team contribute to their team's score. The team champion and runner-up get automatic spots at the NAIA Championships on Nov. 20 in Vancouver, Wash. The remaining squads will have to secure at-large bids, which will likely be awarded to teams included in next week's final Top 25 polls. The top-15 overall placers are considered All-Cascade Conference on both sides, and the top-six runners in the top-20 on teams that don't qualify for the NAIA Championships (automatic or at-large) will get automatic individual berths in the national meet.

SOU MEN AT A GLANCE

Lineup (previous CCC Championship finishes in parentheses):  Trent Abraham (55th, 2025; 44th 2025), Bjorn Austbo, Gus Blank (33rd, 2025), Josh Hepner (7th, 2025), Logan Huffman (49th, 2024; 41st 2025), Andrew Rush, Carter Stedman (4th, 2025), Mason Weisgerber (8th, 2023; 21st, 2024; 5th, 2025), Carter Yates

NAIA Rankings: No. 3 Southern Oregon, No. 8 College of Idaho, No. 10 Trinity Western (B.C.), No. 16 Eastern Oregon, No. 23 Northwest, RV Corban 

History:  At last year's CCC Championships, Southern Oregon turned out its best finish in three years behind three All-Cascade Conference performances in a tight race for second. They scored 89 points, finishing just ahead of College of Idaho (91) and Trinity Western (93), but fell to Eastern Oregon (71), who put five runners in front of SOU's fourth. 

The Raiders have won 13 team titles in program history — including 10 consecutive victories from 2008-17 —  with their most recent win in 2022. Over the previous 13 years, they've produced three individual champions: Eric Avila (2013), Ray Schireman (2015) and Isaac Fernandez (2022).  

Outlook:  The Raiders enter the race as the favorites after traversing a dominant regular season with minimal hiccups by winning three invites, placing third in another to two NCAA Division I teams and never dropping lower than third in the NAIA Top 25 ratings. In their latest showing, the Raiders claimed the Blazing Tiger Classic team title, beating now No. 13 Mid-America Christian (Okla.) by 42 points with an 80-second spread, their best of the season. 

Even with all the optimism, the Raiders will still need to fire on all cylinders to win their first CCC title in four years. Their largest hurdle will be College of Idaho, which doesn't have an individual favorite to win the race, but boasts eight runners who've run faster than 25 minutes for 8K this year. The Raiders only saw the Yotes once this season, where they proved to be a problem when the Raiders edged them by just a single point at the Charles Bowles Invite, despite SOU's top-3 going 2-4-9 to CI's top-3 finishing 21st, 23rd and 24th. 

SOU's been led by a front-running trio that's been nothing but consistent thus far. Returning All-CCC runners Weisgerber and Stedman are projected to repeat in the top-5 and both have the potential to win the race, and junior transfer Andrew Rush is also expected to be in the mix after finishing two and six seconds behind Stedman in his last two outings. SOU will be in a good place if sophomores Josh Hepner can repeat his 2025 All-CCC performance and Gus Blank — who just ran a season's best at Blazing Tiger — can improve upon last year's 33rd-place showing.  

Trinity Western, who has an individual favorite in Justin Kiplagat, is another squad looking to upset the Raiders. And after a slow start, the defending champions of Eastern Oregon had its best race of the year at the Tyson Invitational two weeks ago. 

Individual Notes:

• Returning NAIA runner-up Mason Weisgerber will be vying for his first conference title. After placing fourth at the Simpson Invite, the senior won the Pacific Lutheran Invitational (24:19), posted a season's best (24:11) in a second-place finish at the Willamette Invite and finished third (24:42) at Blazing Tiger. Any other year, he'd be the clear favorite to win, but SOU's 10K record holder will still have his work cut out for him racing Corban's Jack Gladfelter and Trinity Western's Kiplagat. He's raced them both already this year though, besting Kiplagat at Pacific Lutheran and Gladfelter at Willamette. 

• Carter Stedman finished fourth at the Willamette Invite in a season's best time of 24:12 and took sixth at Blazing Tiger in 25:03. The senior from Roseburg took fourth at last year's championships and followed it up with another fourth-place finish at the NAIA Championships.

• The Raiders retained all five scorers from last year's postseason efforts and improved their lineup by adding  Andrew Rush. Since reporting to campus, the Montana native won the Simpson Invite and hasn't placed lower than ninth in a race. He posted a 28-second personal best in Salem, finishing seven ticks behind second-place Weisgerber in 24:18. 

• Josh Hepner placed 38th (24:55) at Charles Bowles and 11th (25:21) at Blazing Tiger. He finished last year as the top freshman in the CCC circuit.

• Logan Huffman, a junior from Medford, has run two CCC championship races and scored in both of them, finishing fourth for the Raiders in 2024 and fifth in 2025. He was SOU's fifth runner in their third-place effort in Willamette. 

SOU WOMEN AT A GLANCE

Lineup (previous CCC Championship finishes in parentheses): Meadow Baxter, Izzie Calingasan (88th, 2025), Kayla Gorchels (64th, 2025), Mercedes Harms (41st, 2023; 34th, 2024; 54th, 2025) , Ashley Jentzsch (46th, 2023; 37th, 2024; 41st, 2025), Alyssa Johnson (14th, 2023; 2nd, 2024; 2nd, 2025) , Ellieana Massey, Emily Picard (22nd, 2025)

NAIA Rankings: No. 2 College of Idaho, No. 12 Lewis-Clark State, No. 15 Eastern Oregon, RV Southern Oregon

History:  Sparked by runner-up Alyssa Johnson, the Raiders placed second in the team standings for the seventh consecutive championship in 2025. Although the Raiders have yet to capture a team title, they've produced one champion in team history: Jessa Perkinson, who won in 2017.

Outlook: The Raiders will have a chance to reinstate a place for themselves at the national meet after falling out of the NAIA Top 25 rankings following a 12th-place showing at the Blazing Tiger Classic. They'll most likely need to beat No. 12 Lewis-Clark State or No.15 Eastern Oregon to do so. In head-to-head racing, they've only seen the Mounties this year, finishing two places behind them in 11th at the Willamette Invite. 

They'll be led by All-American Alyssa Johnson, who earned back-to-back second-place finishes in 2024-25. Sophomore Emily Picard has been a strong second runner and looks to be peaking at the right time after finishing in a 6K personal best of 22:52 two weeks ago. SOU will rely on two freshmen, Ellieana Massey and Meadow Baxter, to fill the third and fourth slots and senior Mercedes Harms to round out the scoring. 

No. 2 College of Idaho continues to be bulletproof and seeks its eighth consecutive title. The Yotes claim six of the top-25 6K times in the conference. 

Individual Notes:

• Alyssa Johnson started the year by winning the Simpson Invite before taking third at the Pacific Lutheran Invitational, 12th at the Charles Bowles Invite and third again at the Blazing Tiger Classic. The senior won her first CCC title on the track last spring but is still searching for her first on the grass. She placed 10th in 21:35 at last year's NAIA Championships. 

• Sophomore Emily Picard will be seeking her first All-Cascade Conference honor after a successful fall campaign. The Madras High graduate ran a cross country 5K best (18:46) at the Willamette meet and dipped under 23 minutes over 6K for the first time at Blazing Tiger. 

• Freshman Ellieana Massey posted her second fastest 5K of her life, finishing the Charles Bowles Invite in 19:08. She's only completed one other race this year, placing 122nd (25:05) at Blazing Tiger.

• Two Tigard High graduates, Meadow Baxter and Mercedes Harms, have gone back and forth. Harms emerged ahead in the season opener and at the Willamette Invite, while Baxter got the best of her reunited teammate at PLU and Blazing Tiger.