Washington State’s 2015 cross-country team has reached the end of its road.

Traveling to Louisville, Kentucky for the NCAA Cross-Country Championship as break began, the men’s team had high expectations for itself.

“Our goal is to finish in the upper half of the field,” Head Coach Wayne Phipps said before Nationals. “I feel like we can be in the top 15. We just have to perform solidly just like we did at the Regional championship and I think we will perform very well.”

Although the men’s team ended up placing 26th out of the 31 teams at Nationals, all of the men ran faster 10k times than they did at the NCAA Regionals meet on Nov. 13.

Despite the team’s overall result, sophomore Michael Williams stepped up in the D-I race on Nov. 21 at E.P. “Tom” Sawyer Park.

“Michael Williams fell early on and moved up from 200th to 57th, which was pretty impressive,” Phipps said in a press release.

Finishing with a time of 30 minutes and 40 seconds on the 10,000-meter course, Williams was the first Cougar to cross the finish line. About 30 seconds behind Williams, junior John Whelan finished 91st. The next scoring Cougar was sophomore Sam Levora, right on the heels only Whelan.

Then came the freshmen: Nathan Wadhwani finished in 31:28, and Chandler Teigen took twenty seconds off his Regional time to finish in 31:46. The final two freshmen to round out the “Squad of Seven” were Nathan Tadesse, who was a second faster than he was at Regionals, and Jake Finney, cutting almost a full minute off his Regional time.

“We had a great season and just couldn’t quite finish off the way we wanted,” Phipps said. “To be 26th in the nation, and then return everyone including only one junior shows we have a very bright future.”

With a young team this season, the men’s cross-country should be a force as they look ahead to coming years. Coach Phipps will have time to mold the team to be stronger and faster. One thing he will not need to worry about is the student-athletes’ academics.

The 2015 Pac-12 Conference Cross-Country All-Academics teams featured six women and two men from Washington State University. Commissioner Larry Scott announced Nov. 23 the individuals with a 3.0 overall grade point average (GPA), or higher, and were starters or significant contributors to their team.

Of the six all-conference scholars on WSU’s women’s team, Steffie Pavey, a junior accounting major, leads the pack with a 3.98 GPA. From the men’s team, juniors Alex Simpson and John Whelan were also named to the team. Simpson was put on the men’s second team with his 3.6 GPA in his journalism and media production major.

Reporting by Casie Moe