In John Carroll University’s first ever appearance in a North Coast Athletic Conference Championship meet, the men’s cross country team took home the gold. The Blue Streaks scored 24 points, a new record for the NCAC program.
Daniel Tutskey, director of the JCU cross country program, spoke about the team’s monumental accomplishment. “To be the first program on the campus… to win an NCAC championship is really special,” he said.
The path to this championship has not been an easy one. During summer training, athletes such as Charles Payne ’28 and Chuck Reigrut ’28 suffered injuries that put them out of commission for a few weeks, hindering their abilities as well as their training process.
These injuries, along with a smaller team size, led to a rough start for the Blue Streaks. At the Inter-Regional Rumble at Oberlin College, the first meet of the championship season, the team placed fifth overall. Though the season was far from over for the runners, the results from this race were far from ideal. “We had our backs against the wall,” Tutskey shared.
The team did not let this performance get the better of them. On the contrary, the men used it as an opportunity to work harder and improve their abilities. “They persevered,” Tutskey said, “and that’s just part of being an athlete.” He highlighted the importance of “setting a foundation” of hard work throughout the season and mentioned Brian Standley ’26 as one of the runners who “really filled a role and stepped up” to make sure the whole team kept getting better.
Eventually, these efforts culminated in the moment when Nate Julien ’27, Sam Su ’28 and Ian Paul ’26 completed the championship race one after the other. “You could see the elation when they crossed the finish line and they knew that they had won the championship,” Tutskey said. He remembered the three celebrating with each other then waiting at the finish “for their teammates to come in.”
This commitment to team and community is something that sets this year’s team apart from the rest. “Every team in every year has [its] own identity,” Tutskey said, adding that a conference championship “doesn’t mean as much” if the team members do not support each other along the way. “If we win as a team, everybody’s a conference champion,” he summarized.
Looking forward, Tutskey saw how this year’s championship will influence the future of cross country at JCU. He said that the team “set up the foundation for what the program can accomplish in the coming years,” hoping that this season marks the first of many victories at NCAC.
He also emphasized the legacy this team will have, since “there’s only gonna be one first team that does it.” Due to that special place in JCU sports history, as well as the runners’ shared sense of community, he said “there won’t be another team that will be like this team.”
Above all, Tutskey believes that the friendship shared among the men was key to the team’s success. He described the runners as being “greater than the sum of their parts because they just care.” He also commended them for being “willing to trust the process, willing to trust each other and willing to sacrifice things to achieve the goal that they wanted to achieve.”
As proud as he is of the NCAC championship, Tutskey realized the true impact of this team will be in the bonds formed among the members. “The most important thing is how you make other people feel,” he said, “and that’s what your legacy is when you leave here.”
Whether success is measured by championship titles or by personal bonds formed, it is clear that the Blue Streaks emerge victorious.
