Jemutai Closes Cross Country Season with 81st Place Finish at NCAA Championships

Saturday, November 22

Columbia, Mo.

University of Kansas

NCAA Championship

Emmah Jemutai at the NCAA XC Championships

Photo by: Anaya Boseman/Kansas Athletics

Jemutai Closes Cross Country Season with 81st Place Finish at NCAA Championships

11/22/2025 11:18:00 AM | Cross Country

Championship Women's 6K Results Photo Gallery

COLUMBIA - Mo. — Emmah Jemutai finished 81st out of 261 runners in the NCAA Cross Country Championships Saturday morning at the Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia, Mo. She set a new personal record 6K time of 19:49.1, breaking her previous best by 25.2 seconds.

Kansas assistant head cross country coach Michael Whittlesey was very proud of how Jemutai competed throughout the race. She did really well and we're proud of how she competed today. She had a huge personal record on that course, and ran about 42 seconds faster than she did last time we were here in October, so that's really good.

Jemutai was the lone representative for the Jayhawks at the meet. She jumped out with the main pack to start the race, crossing the first kilometer mark in 67th place with a time of 3:05.9. At that mark, nearly the entire field was still bunched, with Jemutai only two seconds off 40th place and only two seconds ahead of 90th.

Jemutai slid to 85th at the two kilometer mark, before recovering and climbing right back up to 69th at the halfway point in the race. Jemutai continued to fight through the soggy ground in the back half of the race, trying to stick with the runners around her as they climbed the pack.

She had some trouble finding the right people to focus on in that first kilometer. Some of the people we were trying to get her with, we missed them and then it was trying to find new focus points on people to compete with. But I thought she kept battling throughout the race. Whittlesey said, If she's able to get a couple more focal points, I think she does even better.

Jemutai fell a couple of places down the stretch, finishing 81st out of the 261 runners that crossed the finish line, setting a new personal record while competing against the best in the country. The redshirt sophomore finished in 19:59.1, breaking her old 6K record of 20:14.3 that she set a couple of weeks earlier at the Big 12 Championships.

Whittlesey was proud of the growth she showed throughout the year, and thinks this is just the start of a successful cross country career: She's really starting to learn how to run cross country. A lot of that, as a middle distance athlete, is just trusting in herself through a 6K and really trusting what she can do. Whittlesey said, I think she has done a great job and has gotten better in every single race as we've moved through the season. As a sophomore I think that bodes extremely well for her future.

Jemutai was the first Jayhawk to compete in the NCAA Championships since Lona Latema and Chandler Gibbens competed in 2023. Full women's 6K results can be found here.