Emmah Jemutai Looking to Finish Season Strong at NCAA Cross Country Championships

Saturday, November 22

Columbia, Mo.

University of Kansas

NCAA Championship

Photo by: Anaya Boseman/Kansas Athletics

Emmah Jemutai Looking to Finish Season Strong at NCAA Cross Country Championships

11/20/2025 10:45:00 AM | Cross Country

Championship Information Live Results

LAWRENCE, Kan. - Emmah Jemutai will represent the Kansas Jayhawks at the NCAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday, November 22nd, at the Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia, Mo. The women's 6K race is scheduled to begin at 9:20 am.

Jemutai qualified for her first NCAA Championships after an impressive 12th place finish at the NCAA Midwest Regionals. She finished with a time of 20:36.0 and it was her highest placement since the season opening Bob Timmons Classic, where she placed second.

She is the first Jayhawk to qualify since 2023, when Lona Latema and Chandler Gibbens represented Kansas, and marks only the ninth time a Kansas female runner has qualified individually.

"I'm very excited for her. She's worked really hard, and you're excited that she cares that much about being at nationals in cross country. Not everybody is always focused that way." Assistant head cross country coach Michael Whittlesey said, "As a middle distance runner, sometimes they use cross country as a way of getting ready for track, but she really wants to be great. She's a competitor in everything that she does. She wants to be representing KU and she wants to be at nationals competing against the best."

Jemutai will go up against the best of the best, running against the top 30 nationally ranked teams as well as individual runners from 33 other teams. She is excited for the challenge, however, and is ready to compete at the highest level.

Similarly to the NCAA Regionals race, Jemutai will be running alone. It will be difficult to run without the help of a teammate, but the coaching staff has no doubt that she has the internal drive to compete.

"She is extremely competitive," Whittlesey said, "and it doesn't matter what event she's doing, she wants to be very competitive in it. She has some rivals that she knows she can run with, and she's going to use that to her advantage because they're some of the best people out there in cross country as well."

In addition to being the top Jayhawk runner this season, the coaching staff is hoping that the rest of the program benefits from her competitive nature, and lean on her to build a culture for the program. Jemutai was recently named a captain for the Jayhawks' Track and Field team.

"Her drive of wanting to be the best disseminates throughout the entire program." Whittlesey concluded. "She really wants to not only be the best, but she wants the program to be really good. She's a very caring person, and cares about how her teammates are doing… She brought the team over recently to make them dinner and share in her culture and that speaks to me about the connection she wants to have with the team and with the program. She wants to be one of the best runners out there in the world and people can see that and want to hop on the train and be a part of it."

HOW TO FOLLOW ALONG
The women's 6K is scheduled to begin at 9:20 a.m. and will be streamed live on ESPNU. Live results will be available throughout the day via PTTiming. More information about the event can be found here and fans can stay current with results by following the official Kansas Track & Field and Cross Country X account @kansastfx.