SPARTANBURG, S.C. - Noah Martinson earned the best NCAA regional finish in App State men's cross country history as the Mountaineers closed out the 2026 season at Friday's NCAA Southeast Regional.
Five App State finishers all broke the previous school record in the men's 10K, as the Mountaineers earned their highest team finish (seventh) since 2001 and matched the second-best in school history behind the 1994 team's third-place result. It was the program's best finish under the current regional format.
Martinson led the way, holding a top-25 spot throughout the race before catapulting into 12th and shattering the school record by nearly a minute (29.22.8). His 12th-place result is the best individual regional finish in men's program history ahead of a 14th-place showing by Tommy Holland in 1994. Freshman Jackson Tuck was the next Mountaineer to cross the finish line (29.59.8), followed shortly after by Sun Belt champion Thomas Wlazlowski (30:01.6), Henry Stark (30.03.6) and Rowan Gwin (30:05.8). All five runners finished in the top 60.
"The guys raced well today," said Sun Belt Men's Cross Country Coach of the Year Brad Herbster. "Noah ran very well today on his way to earning our first All-Region honor since 2008. Jackson had a really good first regional, and Rowan, Henry and Thomas helped solidify a seventh-place team finish. It was incredible to see all five guys break the school record."
Wake Forest and Eastern Kentucky earned automatic bids to the NCAA Championships as the top two men's teams. Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Duke and Furman were the only other men's teams to defeat App State, which placed ahead of the likes of Kentucky, Virginia, Louisville, NC State and Clemson.
Fourteen at-large bids to the NCAAs will be given nationally to teams following this weekend's regional competition, so the four Southeast teams that finished ahead of App State in the third-sixth spots are higher in the pecking order to potentially snag a team berth.
The top four individual finishers in each region who are not part of a qualifying team earn automatic bids to nationals, and five of the top 11 individual finishers in the Southeast were from either Louisville or Kentucky, which finished behind App State in the team race, so Martinson's impressive result won't lead to an advancement to the NCAA Championships.
In the women's 6K, Josie Jackson capped off her strong season by earning a spot in the top 120 in a field of 268 runners with one of her best times of the season. Tessa Massa and Baylor Wolfe were only a few strides behind her, with both placing inside the top 130. The top five was rounded out by Ashby Williams, with an improvement of her previous regional time, and Sadie Wortman, competing in her first regional as a Mountaineer. The Mountaineer women finished 21st out of 38 teams.
"Our team raced well today to finish out the season," women's distance coach Annie Richards said. "The Southeast Region is one of the strongest in the country, and we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to compete among the best. Josie, Tessa and Baylor were our leaders up front, and the whole group finished within a 40-second spread. I look forward to this group returning next year and making progress into the top 15 teams."
NC State and South Carolina claimed the top two team spots and automatic NCAA Championships bids on the women's side.
Both App State teams were the highest-finishing Sun Belt teams in Spartanburg.
