WARSAW, Ind. – Several pieces of MACU Cross Country were made at the Warsaw Community Cross Country Course on Friday morning in the NCCAA National Championships as Gracie Sanders became the women's first ever two-time NCCAA All-American, Jaden Rodriguez became the first men's NCCAA All-American and the men's team put together its best ever finish at national meet, placing fourth out of the 11 competing teams.

Opening the morning with the women's D-I 5k event, Sanders, who became an All-American with a sixth-place finish in last year's event, bested her own mark by finishing third this year as her time of 18:58.0 was not only the third-fastest 5000-meter mark in MACU's record book, but was also just the third time ever that a MACU runner has eclipsed the 19-minute barrier.

The senior was just 15 seconds off the winning pace and finished just two seconds behind Malone's Rylee Yocum for second, but comfortably had the podium in the bag by beating Wayland Baptist's Inmaculada Felipe Delgado by 13 seconds.

On the men's side, the Evangels as a team wrapped up the event with 134 points, sitting 20 points higher than Grace (Ind.) in fifth and 25 tallies higher than Bethel (Ind.) in sixth, the two teams that were the hosts of the event. It was a strong improvement over last year's results when MACU first competed as a team at nationals as the Evangels finished seventh out of 12 teams back on Nov. 10, 2023.

Rodriguez continued his incredible season of MACU firsts. After becoming MACU's first All-Sooner Athletic Conference honoree less than a week ago, the freshman quickly became the Evangels' first NCCAA All-American when he blazed a sixth-place time of 25:53.0, marking the second-fastest 8k time in MACU's record book.

Alexander Pebeahsy was the second-best finisher for the Evangels as his time of 27:24.2 was good enough to net him 31^st out of the 91 runners in the event while scoring MACU 26 team points.

Aidan Collins netted the Evangels 30 points with his 35^th place time of 27:57.9 while Cameron Pearson scored 34 points with his 39^th place time of 28:10.3

Connor Gerth rounded out MACU's scoring for the contest as his 28:18.4 allowed him to finish in 43^rd place and net the Evangels 38 points, making it so that all five of MACU's scoring runners placed in the top half of the championship field.

While the Evangels have wrapped up team competition for the fall 2024 season, Rodriguez and Sanders will have one more race to go as the two NCCAA All-Americans will test themselves as MACU's first ever NAIA qualifiers as the two will race in the NAIA National Championships on Saturday, Nov. 23.