On Friday, Nov. 14, UC San Diego women’s and men’s cross country headed north to compete at the NCAA West Regional Championships in Sacramento, hoping to qualify for the NCAA cross country championships. Led by redshirt senior Sylvana Northrop, the women’s team placed 13th, improving from its 16th-position finish at last year’s West Regional meet. The men’s side came in 18th place for the second consecutive year.
Out of the 40 teams in the West Region, only the top two earn an automatic bid to the NCAA cross country championships. Outside of those 14 runners, the top four athletes at regionals also earn a spot at the NCAA championships.
The NCAA DI Women’s Cross Country Regional Preseason Rankings predicted UCSD to finish in 14th. With all five scorers in the top 100, the women’s team placed 13th out of 40 — just 7 points behind 12th-place UCLA. As she’s been doing all season, Northrop led the Tritons, finishing the women’s 6,000-meter race in 20:16. She placed 23rd overall, just seven spots and nine seconds away from punching a ticket to nationals as an individual qualifier. At West Regionals last year, she came in 29th with a time of 20:23.
Just two weeks ago, at the Big West cross country championships in Hawai’i on Oct. 31, Northrop edged out a pair of Cal Poly runners to become UCSD’s first Big West cross country champion since 2005. Though she ultimately didn’t punch a ticket to the NCAA championships, Northrop ended her final cross country season as UCSD’s first-ever Division-I conference champion. The Triton women came in third in the Big West, just 7 points behind UC Irvine, while Cal Poly was crowned the regular season champion.
On the men’s side, redshirt senior Nathan Garderes posted the fastest Triton time at West Regionals, finishing the 10,000 meters in 81st place. With a personal record time of 31:05, he knocked off almost 40 seconds from his time at last year’s West Regionals meet. Sophomore Joseph Vargas was the second Triton across the line, coming in 98th with a time of 31:21 in his first collegiate 10K. Senior Evan Hild took off five seconds from last year’s West Regional time to improve by nine spots. Despite their improvements, the Tritons came in 18th again — an underwhelming result for a team predicted to come in 13th in the 2025 NCAA DI Men’s Cross Country Regional Preseason Rankings.
With both Northrop and Garderes graduating this year, the Tritons have their work cut out for them to improve their spot in the postseason next year. Although West Regionals capped off UCSD’s 2025 cross country season, the Tritons will be back in action for indoor track, with competition set to kick off at the Nevada Invitational on Jan. 16 and 17, 2026.
