No. 10 Taylor Primed for NAIA National Championships

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UPLAND, Ind. – The No. 10 Taylor (71-25) men's cross country team is preparing for its tenth-straight NAIA National Championships set to take place in Vancouver, Washington on Friday, November 17 at 2:30 pm.

The Trojans grabbed one of the 12 at-large berths in the field after a terrific season capped by an impressive second-place finish at the 2023 Crossroads League Championships.

Paced by All-Crossroads League performances from Ryan Hanak, Nathan Burns, and Luke Harber, TU finished above three ranked teams, while only trailing the No. 1 squad in the NAIA.

2023 has seen the Trojans on an upward trend, as a young team has continually posted faster times, with their best performance coming right before the Crossroads League Championships at the Blazing Tiger Classic. The TU men ran a season-best time of 2:05.97, which is the fourth fastest in program history and claimed third place in a highly competitive field of eight ranked squads.

A Freshman, Burns has had a terrific debut collegiate season for Taylor, pacing the Trojans in all but one race. Burns set a course record during his first home race for Taylor by almost 10 seconds and later ran a personal best time of 24:36.1 for the sixth-fastest time in program history.

Harber was consistently in the top three for Taylor, while Hanak broke through late in the season, finishing in second and then first for TU in the final two races.

Along with the aforementioned trio of Trojans, Ben Eiffert and Zach McKowen scored in all but one race and each have a time in the top-10 of the season.

The Taylor men have competed at nine consecutive NAIA National Championships, finishing as the runner-up in 2019 and claiming the program's first national championship in 2020.