The Red Pack is ready to take on the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) Championships. As a sport, cross country provides one of the most unique conference championships in all of college athletics.
Unlike football or basketball, winning the NCAC doesn’t come from beating opponents one at a time. From summer training through August, September and October, the months of preparation culminate in one day, where every step of the season has to add up to a final score.
The NCAC Championships will take place on Sunday, November 3 at the LaVern Gibson Cross Country Course in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Four Little Giants, Brayden Curnutt ’25, Justin Santiago ’25, Will Neubauer ’25 and Jacob Sitzman ’25 are ready to tackle their senior conference meet with a chance to pin their legacy as one of the most experienced and talented teams in the historic Red Pack program.
The transition from high school to collegiate cross country is a major jump, and every runner had to find their own way forward. Following the process-oriented instruction of Head Cross Country Coach Tyler McCreary, the four seniors gradually made their way into the core of the team.
“Freshman year, you’re doing all the workouts and you’re on the team and you’re not really contributing that much – or it feels like that,” said Sitzman. “Then you go to the next year. Maybe we contributed a little more, and then the next year, even more. And now all of us here are integral parts of the team. So it’s that slow progress.”
“We took very different journeys to where we’re at right now,” said Santiago. “We’ve all developed really well over the course of our years here. And a lot of that is Coach McCreary, his focus on development and belief in us as a class.”
From the beginning, these seniors have also been students of those who came before.
“I can contribute a lot of my success … to that senior class that was here when I was a freshman,” said Curnutt. “We all can attest to this too, that everyone had a really good relationship with all of them. And the way that they went about their work, either on the track, on the cross country course and then outside of that too – they showed us the ropes of what it means to be a Wabash man and be a member of the Red Pack.”
The team culture is something that was given to these four and something they hope to give down to those who come after.
“[We have] little traditions, we do a Halloween run every year, where we give each other Halloween costumes and we go run down Main Street,” said Neubauer. “Or we do a Christmas run. Keeping those traditions alive and well on the team is a huge part of keeping that culture where it should be.”
Months of preparation will be settled in a 30-minute race on November 3. The NCAC meet will be brutal, but fair. Every day of preparation for four years has put Curnutt, Neubauer, Santiago and Sitzman in the position to go out and succeed.
Once again the NCAC competition will be fierce with no clear favorite emerging ahead of the meet. In the Pre-Conference Championship Coaches Poll, the Red Pack was picked to finish fourth, but they hope to outperform projections for the second-straight season. To do this, each of the four seniors will need to hit their goal for the race.
“Whether we’re picked first or fourth, again – we saw that happen last year – we’ve got to run the race,” said McCreary. “It’s an 8,000-meter race on a tough course, and at the end of the day it comes down to who’s going to be competitive and composed. And I would take our guys every day of the week over anyone else in the conference.”
Curnutt, who has led the team for the entire season hopes to take home the gold finish individually, while helping steer to a repeat as NCAC champions.
“I’ve kind of caught myself thinking this week, what can I do to get an individual conference championship,” said Curnutt. “We all want to individually succeed, but I think the entire team understands that the Red Pack comes first.”
Sitzman and Neubauer have been close together in almost every meet, and will be pushing for two top-10 finishes and all-conference honors.
Santiago, recovering from an injury, will be ready to race. As the fifth-place runner on the team, his goal is to shorten the gap and finish as low as he can.
“I might go in there having run once or twice beforehand in the prior month,” said Santiago. “But I’m still very focused on the team, and I just have to believe in the biking and the swimming I’ve done to try to stay in shape. If we’re going to try to win … the top 25 is where we need our number five guy to be. It’s going to be hard to say until I get on the line healthy.”
Alongside the four seniors, Haiden Diemer-McKinney ’26 will hope to finish within the top-10 as the usual second man on the team.
If each member of the team executes, they will have a strong shot of winning the meet, but following the culture of the program, the four value the process over the result.
“It’s easy to say that a good team is going to win the meet,” said Neubauer. “But I think what Coach McCreary has instilled in us is that a good team meet for us is that we leave it all out there.”