SALEM, OR – Sophomore Damaris Kibiwot earned her second straight All-Cascade Conference cross country honor after a top 10 finish at the 2025 Cascade Conference Cross Country Championships, presented by U.S. Bank, on Friday. She led the No. 22 LC State women to a fourth-place finish as a team.
The Warrior women finished fourth in a stacked field of top 25 teams with 105 points, just three points behind No. 16 Eastern Oregon. No. 5 College of Idaho took the team title and No. 18 Southern Oregon was second.
“Challenging day for us at conference,” coach Mike Collins said. “We knew it was going to be like that though as we are in probably the toughest single conference in the entire nation, so the bar is raised very high every year for us. On the women’s side we knew we might have a shot at third, maybe even second. Early on we thought we might get there, but as the race went on, we just couldn’t hold a few spots. Even then, we only finished a few points out of third place, but based off our positioning and our ranking, we should hold solid and earn our 25th consecutive spot at nationals.”
Kibiwot placed eighth in the field of 97 runners with a time of 22:19.9 to finish in the top 15 for the second consecutive year.
Senior Camille Ussher just missed the All-CCC cut in 16th place after a career-best time of 22:56.6. Grace Tiegs raced her way into the top 20 at 19th overall with a time of 23:07.4.
Freshmen Eva Lundgren and Kailee Lerew each ran season-best times to round out LC State’s top five. Lundgren was 31st (23:45.7) with Lerew just behind in 33rd (23:56.1). Sophomore Lily Bennett fought her way into the top 50 with a 40th-place finish (24:27.3).
Lilly Gilbert ran her best race of the season to finish 55th (25:03.4). Leila Flannery was 66th (25:39.9), Nuala Rollins placed 68th (25:47.2) and Haileyann Johnson finished 94th (29:58.2).
“We will look forward to hopefully hearing some announcements on Monday,” Collins said. “When it comes to team and individual qualifiers, we will continue to prepare as if we are going and we’ll look forward to hopefully representing the college and our community in the best way we can.”
