Since the head coaching duo of Ryan Vanhoy and Michelle Chewens came to the West Coast in 2022, they have led the Cal Poly Cross Country program into the upper echelon of the Big West Conference.
In 2022, they swept the men’s and women’s team titles at the Big West Championships.
Last year, they did it again.
They followed that up with men’s and women’s teams placing eighth at the NCAA West Regionals.
“We wanted that to be our standard,” Vanhoy said after the 2023 Big West Championship win. “Let’s have a program that can compete to win the conference every year. Then from there, let’s build the program into the national level.”
With almost every runner from last year’s championship meet returning this fall, the Mustangs sights are set on a third consecutive conference sweep.
Championship Roster Maintained
The men will return seven of the nine runners that competed at the championship meet, along with all five of their top finishers.
They’ll be led by graduate student Davis Bove, who cruised to first place at the championship and became the ninth Mustang man to claim the Big West individual title.
Bove racked up quite a few accomplishments in his first year as a Mustang, being crowned the 2023 Big West Men’s Cross Country Athlete of the Year.
This fall will be the last of his collegiate races, as he is now out of eligibility for track & field.
Bove’s experience, being the only graduate student on the men’s roster and running at the National Championships, will help lead a team mostly dominated by underclassmen – 16 out of the 24 runners are underclassmen.
At the championship meet, Bove had no shortage of teammates inside the top ten, as senior Aidan McCarthy (second), redshirt senior Anthony Guerra (fifth) and redshirt junior Spencer Pickren (sixth) each earned All-Big West honors for their top ten finishes.
Sophomore Chris Caudillo, the 2023 Big West Men’s Freshman of the Year, was the fifth Mustang to cross the line at the meet and will also return.
Caudillo, the standout runner of the underclassmen, will lead the underclassmen and look to take a jump heading into his second year as a collegiate runner with some experience.
On the women’s side, they return their top eight finishers from the conference championships.
Four runners finished inside the top ten at the meet and were awarded All-Big West honors: redshirt senior Schuyler Gooley (fourth), senior Hana Catsimanes (sixth), junior Tatiana Cornejo (seventh) and senior Carissa Buchholz (eighth).
The women’s team is not anchored by just one or two runners; instead, it’s a collective effort. They won the championship meet last year despite their highest-placed runner finishing fourth.
In 2022, Chewens led an overlooked team to a first-place victory over UC Irvine by just one point. Last season, they were down by several points in the championship meet before Buccholz passed up four runners in the later half mile to secure eighth place.
Sophomore Sydney Sundgren, the seventh Mustang to cross the finish line at the championship meet, was awarded the 2023 Big West Women’s Freshman of the Year and will return.
NCAA West Region Success
After the Big West Championship meet, the Mustangs also found success at the NCAA West Regional.
Bove’s eighth-place run was tied for the second-highest individual finish by a Mustang man at the regional meet in program history.
He also secured a berth to the NCAA Cross Country Championships, where he closed his outstanding first season at Cal Poly with a 108th-place finish.
Along with him is Guerra, whose 14th-place finish almost secured him a ticket to the national championship meet.
Guerra will look to improve on that mark after narrowly missing the chance to run at nationals.
The women had seven runners compete in the regionals, with their highest finisher, Cornejo, taking 23rd place.
Six out of their seven runners were inside the top 100, with Gooley finishing just four spots behind Cornejo in 28th.
Cornejo was the highest female finisher at a regional level since 2018 and was praised by the All-West Region for finishing in the top 25.
Season at a glimpse
The Mustangs’ season will kick off this Friday at the Waves Invitational hosted by Pepperdine University.
After that, they will prepare for the UC Riverside Invitational on September 21st, which will be the site of this year’s Big West Championship. The championship meet was also held there in 2022 when they captured their first title under Vanhoy and Chewens.
On October 19th, the team will split in half, and the top runners on both sides will travel to Madison, Wisconsin, to race at the site of this year’s national championship meet. The other half of the team will run at the Bronco Invitational hosted by Santa Clara.
The 2024 season will officially get underway on Friday, Aug. 30, with the men’s 6K starting at 4:30 p.m. and the women’s 4K beginning at 5:15 p.m. Neither the men nor the women will have their top runners competing.