Senior Riley Buese breaks school, personal records, assists team in exciting first meet victory since 2017
ALTHOUGH THE season has just begun, the womens cross-country team is already excelling as a team and on an individual level. On Sept. 13, the team won their first meet since 2017, beating out six other schools. On top of this achievement, Lewis & Clark runners placed first and second in the race, and have earned great recognition for their achievements.
The path to winning the Ash Creek Invitational Meet was not easy, but the team persevered. Riley Buese ’25 noted the difficulties the team has faced over the years.
“We’ve had a lot of team struggles over the course of my time here, just with coaching changes and losing a lot of runners,” Buese said.
However, she believed that this year, the team is stronger, as there are more than 10 runners on the womens team. Race day came with its own set of challenges too. Malia Heien ’26 was not feeling well right before the race and thought she might not even run. Despite this, she pushed through and raced, even placing second out of 62 runners. She highlighted her team’s spirit for pushing her through.
“I think just the idea that we were going to win as a team, I was like, I kind of needed to be in there today,” Heien said.
Head Men’s and Women’s Cross Country and Track and Field Coach Chris Reed also pointed out the challenges during the race. Runners are not sure of where they or their team stands during the race, so coach communication is essential.
“Talking to them throughout the race, you know, with a little bit of sense of urgency, like, ‘Hey, we’re only winning by one point. We gotta go, gotta go.’ And then they kind of got big eyes and went and moved up,” Reed said.
Despite not winning a meet since 2017, Reed believed the team had a chance when looking at the other schools’ standings compared to LC’s performance. When he found out they had a shot at winning, he described a feeling of relief.
“As we started to figure out the significance of it, it became more joyous than simply a relief,” he said.
This reaction of joy at beating out the competition was felt by athletes too.
“Western Oregon is a DII school, so there was some strong competition there. So I was really excited to see that we had won,” Heien said.
Not only is the team accomplishing great things, but individual athletes are also performing remarkably well. Specifically, Buese, in addition to placing first in the Ash Creek Invitational, has earned national honors and broken many school records. In mid-September, Buese was named the DIII Cross-Country National Athlete of the Week, becoming the first LC athlete to earn the title. This summer, she was named an Academic All-American for cross country, and for two straight weeks in a row in September, was named the Northwest Conference Student-Athlete of the Week. Furthermore, she broke the school record for the women’s 6K with a time of 21:13:30 at the Pacific Lutheran University Invitational on Sept. 21. These accomplishments have taken hard work, though, according to Buese.
“Especially since coming to college, I definitely feel like I’ve put more time into the sport and so it definitely feels good to see myself improving and feel like that’s paying off,” Buese said.
For other student athletes hoping to earn similar accomplishments, Buese recommends becoming deeply involved in the team and having a competitive spirit.
With this only being the beginning of the season, the team is hoping to grow even further. Both Heien and Buese hope to make it to the NCAA DIII Cross Country National Championships for the second year in a row.
“We have the talent to do some really special things this season, long term, it’s just building off of that and just continuing to improve as runners, in our confidence, in our fitness and our speed,” Reed said.
He hopes both the mens and womens team qualify for NCAA National Championships and win the Northwest Conference Championships. Ideally, this great success early in the season is a sign of more to come later for the women’s cross-country team.
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