Young Core; Stronger Teamwork
Cross country team builds together, top to bottom
Audrey Neale
After a year of learning together, Colorado State’s young cross country core is ready to compete in the 2026 season.
Sophomore year is different. For the first time, a person is no longer the youngest on campus. Buildings become familiar, routes are established, and the fear of being the new person has gone away. You know what you’re doing, you know where you are, you know you belong.
The same feeling can be found within a cross country roster.
The Rams are a young squad, highly made up of underclassmen who are still finding their footing at the collegiate level. What they may lack in years of experience, they make up for in drive.
“What you have with a young team is a really hungry group,” coach Kelly Voelz said. “Just a lot of people who are so excited to be here.”
This excitement is what makes this team different. Many of these runners entered college together, facing similar hurdles of the leap from high school to collegiate athletics.
Now entering this season, they’re not new anymore. They’ve already had a year under their belts, experiencing long workouts, the demanding life of a college athlete and intense competition.
“I feel like last year I was just getting the feel of things, and obviously we talked about my first collegiate races and getting through those and learning the ropes, but this year I feel like I have the confidence and I can take more risks in races,” sophomore Ruby Schwelm said. “There’s just a lot of room to grow. It's kind of exciting to think about how we're going to progress over the next couple of years this season even.”
High school to college is no joke, more work, more intensity, and greater competition. To survive in an environment like this, one has to adapt. For many runners they’re used to being alone in the pack at the front, but now there’s hundreds of runners as eager as they are.
Luckily for these Rams, they don’t have to go it alone.
“It's really motivating to have your teammates around pushing you,” sophomore Tatum Berg said. “Sometimes people will say, ‘come on, you got this,’ and it just gives you that little extra boost to keep going, push through the race, and stay strong in the hard parts.”
Part of what makes the team so connected is the work they put in off the course, attending workouts together, bonding over the challenges of the week, and building friendships.
The closer the team can be, the stronger they are as athletes.
“We really became close this past year. And I think just having that fun dynamic team where we can really just bond and, you know, have a lot of time outside of like training and be able to hang out and do stuff like that,” sophomore Parker Westermann said. “Being able to be really close together as a team has really helped training and if you're close outside of running, then when it comes to races, you can really have fun and work together as a team.”
These young athletes were able to learn together, from running at a high level to being on their own for the first time in their lives. They built more than themselves, they built a community and team they could rely on. They built something even bigger than individual runners.
As young teams go, the experience level is lower, but the ability to improve is far greater. CSU has embraced its young core, putting energy into runners who have multiple years ahead of them.
“It's really exciting to think about where we'll be in the next one or two years or even from now since we'll all be familiar with each other and just having a strong group to work with,” Berg said.
I think just being able to have such a broad spectrum of ages and experiences, it really allows for all of us to have those different perspectives and everyone has a voice on the team.Parker Westermann
Now, a new class of Rams is ready to learn from their peers.
This creates a unique idea of leadership on the team. Leader roles are no longer reserved for just upperclassmen; every athlete is expected to fill a gap regardless of age or class.
“I think just being able to have such a broad spectrum of ages and experiences, it really allows for all of us to have those different perspectives and everyone has a voice on the team,” Westermann said. “And it's not just the oldest guys leading everyone.”
For some, leadership looks like speaking up, encouraging teammates and raising morale. For others leadership is something more simple, pulling a teammate aside and being there for each other when in need.
There isn’t one style of leadership. Everyone finds a way to contribute.
“It's always been our philosophy that everyone on the team has a leadership role that they can fill, and your job is to figure out with your skills, what's the hole on the team that you can fill, and that leadership gap,” Voelz said.
With leadership and age also comes something else -- teamwork.
Cross country can often be viewed as individualistic. At the end of a race each runner has their own time, place, and finish line. However, the sport begins to feel less individualistic when you’re running for the logo on your chest, knowing your best is also the team's best.
“I think individual and team goals kind of go hand-in-hand with each other because if you can perform well yourself, you're going to help bring the team up as well, especially if you're moving up further in the races as a team,” Berg said.
Team bonding and encouragement has become a major factor in the success of CSU cross country, which opens the season Friday at the Wyoming Invitational, the traditional first step. Both the men and women return five members from the 2025 NCAA Regional lineup.
There’s nothing better than looking beside you and seeing a familiar face. Someone you did the workouts with, confided in, trusted and supported running alongside you, figuratively and literally.
With the support of the team behind them, these young Rams were able to jump into a big race and even though it was their first time competing, they didn’t act like it was.
When the race starts, they no longer look like nervous freshmen, they are athletes fully ready to compete. Taking with them new confidence and the people who helped them get there.
“When the gun went off, everything they had, they left out on the field and competed to the best of their ability, and really embody what we know what a Ram to be,” Voelz said.
A year ago these athletes were just starting the beginning of their new lives, learning how to live as people, teammates, and friends.
They are now entering a new season of familiarity, confidence, and the knowledge of what it takes to compete.
This makes CSU more than a group of underclassmen, they are one unit working and growing together, building something which will last far more than one race.
They may have individual finish lines, but these Rams don’t reach them alone.
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