Menomonie’s Bella Jacobsen put together a steady and impactful red-shirt junior season for the University of Wisconsin–Madison women’s cross country team. She opened the fall with a 26th-place finish at the Mizzou Opener on Aug. 29, clocking 18:14.8 over 5 kilometers, before capturing her first collegiate win at the Badger Classic on Sept. 19, running 21:45.9 on the 6K Zimmer Championship Course.

Jacobsen continued to build momentum with an 88th-place finish at the highly competitive Nuttycombe Invitational on Oct. 17, where she posted a season-best 6K time of 21:02.9. At the Big Ten Championships on Oct. 31, she placed 104th in 22:02.5 as the Badgers finished sixth as a team.

Wisconsin advanced to the NCAA Great Lakes Regional on Nov. 14 and ultimately earned a spot at the NCAA Division I Championships. In the national meet, Jacobsen was the Badgers’ fourth scorer, covering the 6-kilometer course in 20:19.8 to finish 161st and help Wisconsin place 26th overall.

Brooklyn Hoff was UW-Stevens Point’s top finisher at the 2025 WIAC Women’s Cross Country Championship, finishing 25th in a time of a personal-best 22:24.04 in the 6-kilometer run at Oshkosh, Nov. 1. Hoff, a sophomore, improved from 43rd place finish at the 2024 championship during her freshman season. The Pointers placed fifth as a team, their best finish since 2021. Earlier in the season, Hoff had set a collegiate-best of 22:53.4 while placing 10th when the Pointers won the UW-Oshkosh Titan Fall Classic.

UW-Stout freshman Peter Cimino made steady strides throughout his first collegiate cross country season, highlighted by a breakout performance at the WIAC Championships. Cimino placed 90th at the conference meet, cutting nearly a full minute off his previous best with a personal-record time of 26:41.51 in the 8K. Earlier in the year, he ran 27:44.2 at the UW–Eau Claire Blugold Invitational, where he finished 158th in a field of 334 runners. His late-season surge contributed to the Blue Devils’ eighth-place team finish at the WIAC meet.

Grant Burns is a member of the Taylor University men’s cross country team and the Trojans finished fifth at the NAIA Men’s Cross Country Championships, Nov. 22. The team finished second at the Crossroad League Championship, Nov.7.  A foot injury has kept Burns out of competition this season.

“I spent the second half of the season cross training mainly on the bike,” Burns said. “I lifted a lot of upper body with some physical therapy for my legs sprinkled in. Starting in late October through early November I have been able to begin doing more legs lifts. Currently, I am on a return-to-run protocol which is a mix of walk and run. If that goes smoothly I will be running 90 minutes per week continuously in three weeks. I will build up mileage from there.”

Burns hopes to return to competition for the track season and seeing his team run at nationals provided motivation.

“One of the things I’m most excited for when I get back from injury is to be able to run with my team,” Burns said. “Going to watch Nationals and seeing the Taylor women win, the men place fifth and the program win a combined national title was an amazing experience. It is going to be great motivation for the coming training block.”

Layne Pitt retired as the longest serving sports information director at UW-Stout and also worked more than a decade at the Dunn County News.

Menomonie Collegians by Layne Pitt is licensed under a CC BY SA 4.0 International license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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