By Tony Chapman and Chris Basnett – For the Nebraska School Activities Association
Eight team champions were crowned Friday at the 2025 Nebraska School Activities Association state cross country championships.
Boys team champions included: Creighton Prep, Lincoln Pius X, Lincoln Christian and Doniphan-Trumbull. On the girls side Omaha Marian, Elkhorn North, Chase County and McCool Junction were champions.
Nearly 7,800 fans attended the event at Kearney Country Club where Crofton’s Avery Arens set an all-class state record in the Class D race with her winning time of 17:28.92. The previous state record was bettered again later in the day by Omaha Duchesne’s CeCe Kramper. On the boys side, Lincoln Christian’s Trevin Opp was a repeat winner helping the Crusaders to a first-ever team title.
Class A: Creighton Prep pulls upset to deny Lincoln North Star first title
When the No. 2-ranked team in the state wins its second championship in three seasons, it’s hard to call it an upset.
But it’s hard to look at what Creighton Prep did Friday at the Nebraska State Cross Country Championships any other way.
The Junior Jays pulled the stunner of the state meet in the final race of the day, outpacing heavy pre-meet favorite Lincoln North Star 53-77 to win the Class A state championship.
North Star came to the Kearney Country Club unbeaten in seven races and as the season-long No. 1-ranked team in the statewide coaches’ rankings, and saw senior Josiah Bitker win the individual gold medal with J’Shawn Afuh finishing third.
But Creighton Prep’s pack mentality paid dividends. The Junior Jays’ five scoring runners finished between 8th and 22nd with junior Isaiah Coleman (eight) and senior Finlay Scully (10th) matching North Star’s two medalists.
“We really didn’t talk about (North Star) a lot. We just talked about trying to run our race,” Prep coach Dan Tietjen said. “We knew if we could get ahead of their fourth and fifth (runners) that we might have a shot, sure, but at the end of the day we just talked about running your race, staying patient, and then just getting out and competing.”
Prep’s victory denied North Star its first state championship in any sport in school history. The two programs had their team tents set up next to each other Friday, making the post-race celebration perhaps a little sweeter for the Junior Jays.
“It’s special. They’re a special bunch of guys, and we’ve loved every minute with them,” Tietjen said. “We’ve had such a great season with the camaraderie, and we were just talking the other day how much they bonded with each other.
“They hang out, and they can be kind of squirrely and act like goofballs, but sometimes you’ve got to roll with it.”
Bitker, North Star’s senior leader, rolled to his first individual championship in a moment he had been dreaming of his entire career.
Bitker finished in 15:45.1, three seconds ahead of Papillion-La Vista South sophomore Aiden Gehring. Afuh, Bitker’s teammate, was third in 15:56.1.
“Every year I came here, I believed I was going to win… It’s unbelievable confidence that I’ve had this whole year, this whole time I’ve been in high school; but it has come out even more this year,” Bitker said. “I’m just so much more confident in myself coming into this race than even last week — just a clear mind, and ready to send it.
“It’s my last race in high school; you’ve got to go for it.”
Despite a slower opening pace than Bitker anticipated, he was running fifth at the one-mile mark and just a couple steps behind Gehring, who set the early pace. By the two-mile mark Bitker and Gehring had separated themselves from the field.
And coming around the final turn, Bitker had separated from Gehring, using a strong kick to pull away for a three-second win.
“I’ve been envisioning the finish of this race, coming off of that final turn, coming through here, and crossing the line in first for such a long time,” Bitker said. “I’ve probably run it through my head a few hundred times. Being able to think about that during the race, knowing that I have what it takes, it just feels amazing to finally get it.”
Class A girls: Marian back on top, Hegge caps perfect season
In the final girls race of the day it was another youngster – Papillon-LaVista South’s Emily Hegge – who capped a perfect freshman season with a state title for the Titans. Her title came with a little junior high motivation.
She lost to Class C champion Scout Bell of Gothenburg as a seventh grader and was also second at the state junior high meet a season ago.
“I am just feeling really proud of myself and the season that I had,” Hegge said. “There was really no pressure from anyone but myself. I was super nervous coming into this race with all the fans, but I felt pretty confident.”
The race played out almost as Hegge and her coach, Jeremy Haselhorst, had predicted. She edged five seniors, winning in 18:24.5. Tatum Neilson of Bellevue West was second, followed by North Platte’s Kori McClain and Millard South’s Abbi Durow.
Hegge broke away in the final mile.
“It was exactly who we expected to be there,” Haselhorst said. “And, it was just a beautiful day (to run). You had a bunch of seniors out there with a lot of motivation. It was a great race, she had to earn it.”
Omaha Marian medaled sophomore Maya Freyer (8th) and freshman Reese Lancaster (9th) to take the team title with 70 points, defeating Lincoln Southwest by 15 points in the team race. It was the eighth title for the Crusaders under 40-year head coach Roger Wright.
“The last three meets are what we kind of point to,” said Wright, who has coached Marian to all their titles. Friday’s championship was the program’s first at 5,000 meters and first since 2008. “I knew they had a shot. And to do it with four freshmen, a sophomore and a junior is just amazing. Today, it feels so good but in a week it will just be another of the eight.”
FINAL CLASS A RESULTS: Boys | Girls
Class B: Elkhorn North girls repeat, Kramper cards second fastest time ever
On any normal state meet day, they’d have celebrated Omaha Duchesne junior CeCe Kramper’s run around Kearney Country Club. Well, they still celebrated the Class B championship.
Kramper rolled to a title in 17:55.65 in what would have been a state record, had she not run after Crofton freshman Avery Arens, who had already broken the record in the first race of the day. No matter for Kramper, who finished sixth last year before shattering the competition during last spring’s track season which then carried over to the fall where she was undefeated in the state.
“I have been thinking about winning a state championship ever since my sisters ran cross country,” Kramper said after the race. “I never thought it would actually happen, but the weather was so nice today. It just happened.
“I just stayed really consistent (with my training) over the spring and summer. I never really expected (to be a sub-18:00 runner), but I opened the season sub-18:00 and it motivated me to go even more. And (Avery) has pushed me to work even harder.”
The team race was a coronation of a near perfect season for defending champion Elkhorn North. They placed all four counting runners under 20 minutes and in their swan song in Class B won the team title with 34 points, 14 clear of conference mate Gretna.
The Wolves got medals for Leah Robinson (4th), Jenna Polking (7th) and Paityn Christoffels (12th). For Polking it was a return to the medal stand for the first time since her freshman season. She did not run at state last year after battling injury.
“Jenna has been hurt for most of the last two years,” Wolves coach Jordan Fuglestad said. “We really wanted to get her here and I told her at the beginning of the year that was our only goal. If she needs to swim or cross train and not compete but it would get her here, then we would do that.”
Fuglestad said that building around Robinson and Christoffels, while getting Polking healthy, let their three new runners get some experience under their belt. The title team included senior Raisa Helweg (a converted volleyball player) and freshmen Riley Kiesling and Michelle Kriz.
“We knew what we had in those three (coming back),” the coach said. “But there was some unknown after that. As the season moved on we started seeing confidence in those other three and it just built throughout the year.
“Today, they ran out of their minds. There was no fear.”
Class B boys: Krier, Majerus power Lincoln Pius X to historic win
David Krier and Joseph Majerus ran shoulder-to-shoulder all season long for Lincoln Pius X, and did it one last time together in their final state meet.
Krier won the Class B individual title while Majerus was second as the duo led Pius X to one of the most lopsided team titles in the 65-year history of the state championships.
The two seniors ran the two fastest times of the day across all four classes, with Krier finishing in 15:26.18 and Majerus crossing the line in 15:33.94. Krier is the first individual champion in Pius X’s storied history.
“Having another person push me all season, someone to follow, someone to follow me, I think it just made it so much easier and so much fun,” Krier said. “Being with a friend like that, especially in workouts, I think we just try so much harder.”
Pius X won by a staggering 70 points, finishing with 20. Seward was second with 90. The margin of victory is the largest in Class B history, and the second-largest in any class behind only Lincoln Southeast’s 77-point win over Creighton Prep in the 1992 state meet. Pius X’s 20 points are the lowest in a state meet since 1997, when Scottsbluff won Class B with 17, and tied for the sixth-fewest ever.
It was Pius X’s 12th overall state championship, pulling the Thunderbolts into a tie with Fremont for second-most all time.
FINAL CLASS B RESULTS: Boys | Girls
Class C: Trevin Opp repeats, leads Lincoln Christian to breakthrough title
The long road back for Trevin Opp ended with a second consecutive state championship, and a breakthrough for his Lincoln Christian program.
Opp passed Gothenburg’s Tyler Hetz with about 150 meters to go and powered to the Class C boys state championship in a time of 15:59.9, and led the Crusaders to their first-ever boys cross country championship.
Lincoln Christian won the team championship with 44 points, seven ahead of defending champion Holdrege. It is the first title for the Crusaders after three consecutive second-place finishes.
“We got runner-up the last three years, and in the fourth year we got third. So it feels great,” said Opp of the team title. “We finally won one, and I was able to get the individual one too. So it’s a lot of fun.”
Christian won with four runners in the top 21. Sophomore Amos Glenn finished 14th, freshman Griffin Opfer was 20th, and senior Nolan Engel finished 21st.
Christian, with largely the same lineup as last season, improved its team score by 25 points over last year to pass Holdrege for the team championship. The Dusters finished second with 51 points. Fort Calhoun (58), Syracuse (86) and Gothenburg (106) rounded out the top five.
“We’re excited, but at the same time, our biggest thing was we wanted to glorify God and what we did and how we did it, win, lose, or whatever. That was our goal,” Lincoln Christian coach Joe Manley said. “I think our kids ran hard. I think that’s part of the testimony that we have, is we work hard and we’re not afraid of that.
“I couldn’t ask the kids to do anything more than that, and they rose to the challenge.”
Opp worked through his own challenges.
He won the 2024 Class C cross country championship. But by the end of the spring track season, he had been diagnosed with a stress fracture in his femur that left him on crutches for four weeks, and forced him to miss summer training and the first two meets of the 2025 season.
Once recovery began, Opp had to start out by riding a bike and swimming. He didn’t run for 11 weeks after the injury. When he did slip the spikes back on, his weekly mileage went from 40 last year to 35 this year.
But, “he just wanted to run,” Manley said. “That’s not something you see a high school kid wanting to do all the time is wanting to run, but it was tough for him to just sit back and not do anything.
“So when he finally could, he just went after it. And that’s what you kind of saw today.”
The injury still gives Opp some issues; he walked with a limp after Friday’s race. He deals with hip pain because of muscle imbalances caused by the stress fracture; even the confidence that should come with being a state champion wasn’t quite at the same level, despite Opp winning the September UNK Invitational on the same course that serves as a sort of state meet preview.
“I did not expect to win (at UNK). And my first race back (in the fall), I raced those two Gothenburg guys, and they both beat me. So I knew I had a shot, but even today, I wasn’t too confident, but I still got the job done.”
Hetz was second for Gothenburg while the Swedes’ Bryson Neels finished third. Holdrege’s Samuel McQuistan and Milford’s Avery Carter rounded out the top five.
“He’s one of our leaders for a reason. He works hard all the time, and he’s not afraid of that. And he’s not afraid to do the hard things and lead in that way,” Manley said of Opp. “And he’s not a complainer — he comes in, he does what he needs to do. That’s one of those priceless things that you can’t coach.”
Class C girls: Chase County wins first championship
A little bit of teamwork and love led to Chase County’s first-ever girls state cross country championship on Friday. The Longhorns, unranked to start the season, scored 67 points to edge Adams Central (77) and Scotus Central Catholic (81) for the title.
“It’s just overwhelming,” said Longhorn coach Troy Hauxwell. “We just had a group of kids that really believed in each other and believed they had a shot (to win). When you don’t focus on yourself and focus on each other sometimes special things happen.
“They are better people than athletes. Everyone wants to be loved and accepted. When you have that, sometimes you can do the unexpected.”
The Longhorns lost to Scotus by 20 points at the UNK Invite, but came away encouraged by what they could do if given another opportunity. Freshman Addison Hauxwell, the coach’s daughter, finished fourth and they put two other runners in the top-25.
After finishing fourth as a freshman, Gothenburg’s Scout Bell won the individual race in 19:16.4 – 14 seconds faster than Wayne freshman Tayla Hurner. In all, the young field produced six freshman medalists.
Bell’s win backed up her title at the UNK Invite earlier this fall.
“It’s very rewarding,” she said. “I think there have been times for me when I took winning for granted and didn’t appreciate it. Now that I have had some losses and it feels nice to get these big wins.”
FINAL CLASS C RESULTS: Boys | Girls
Class D: Arens Makes History, McCool Junction Repeats
The times Crofton freshman Avery Arens brought with her to the 2025 NSAA State Cross Country meet were, well, historical. So it may have been too much to ask that she break the state meet record on her first trip around Kearney Country Club.
But, that’s exactly what she did.
Arens joined sisters Hayley and Jordyn as state champions, but she did it in record fashion with a 17:28.53 sprint around the course to break Fremont state champion Elli Dahl’s 2021 record of 17:57.93.
“I was just really, really excited to be here,” Arens said of her first state meet experience. “I have been coming here since I was a little kid, cheering my sisters on. It’s pretty cool, but it’s not about winning. It is about the atmosphere and being with your team.”
Arens effort led Crofton to a runner-up finish in the team race behind defending state champion McCool Junction who used a 5th place finish from defending champion Kayleigh Betka and 10th place finish from Leah Dawson to edge the Warriors 30-31 and deny them a 22nd state championship.
Mustang coach Ryan Underwood said the plan was to see if Betka and Dawson could create a little gap between Arens the No. 2 runner for Crofton, then hope that a third runner – on Friday it was freshman Kayliana Kitto – could do just enough.
“(Crofton) has been so good and so consistent all year,” Underwood said. “We knew Arens was unattainable, so we wanted our top-two ahead of their second runner. Then to get our third and close as we could to their third.”
Kitto, with a personal best 20:29.9, was the magic trick for the Mustangs.
“Kayliana goes from 12th at the district meet to 22nd in the state today,” the coach said. “She ran the absolute race of her life today and to be right on the heels of Crofton. We set a goal for her to run a 20:30 by the end of the year because we knew that would be what it would take.”
A prophetic ending. And another championship.
All Crofton coach Mickey Doerr could do was tip his hat in what he knew would be a very tight team race.
“It was a phenomenal race,” the coach said, of both Arens’ record and the team races. “Avery came through the first mile with a smile on her face so we knew it would go well. All three of our girls finished ahead of McCool’s third. We gave a great, great effort; it just didn’t go our way.”
Class D boys: Johnson, Doniphan-Trumbull win first championships
Kaser Johnson pulled away over the last half mile of the race and ran to the Class D boys championship in a time of 15.42.5.
And then he turned around to cheer on his teammates.
What he saw was the rest of the Doniphan-Trumbull Cardinals put together one of their best efforts of the season to give the program its first-ever state championship.
“Amazement. Fulfillment. I’m just very happy with our performance,” Johnson said after the race. “It’s been a grind all year, and to come out here like that, as a team and an individual, it just feels amazing.”
Doniphan-Trumbull, ranked fifth in the statewide coaches poll coming into state, scored 24 points. Tri County was second with 35 points. Cornerstone Christian finished third with 43 points.
Johnson, a junior, beat fellow junior Elijah Goodell of Perkins County to the line by eight seconds. Goodell also finished second in 2024. Doniphan-Trumbull’s other scoring runners were sophomore Carter Hannon and junior Bladen Rainforth.
“I was going through the statistics (before the race), and I wasn’t sure that there were two teams that were better than us,” Doniphan-Trumbull coach Corey Hatt said. “So laying it all out for the guys, and putting it on paper and showing them that this really was possible. And the closer we got to the race, the more I thought it was possible.”
FINAL CLASS D RESULTS: Boys | Girls
Tony Chapman is a freelance writer based in Grand Island. He has written for multiple Nebraska daily and weekly newspapers. His weekly Harvest Sports Newsletter covers a wide variety of Nebraska prep sports.
Chris Basnett is a freelance writer based in Lincoln. He has covered prep and college sports for more than 20 years and most recently was the assistant sports editor at the Lincoln Journal Star. He currently provides content for the Harvest Sports Newsletter.