Portland, Oregon is a city known for running. It is home to the world headquarters of the international running titan Nike, with its beautiful campus possessing one of the most stunning tracks that is often used by Olympians and Nike sponsored athletes. It is also home to some of the country's largest track and cross country meets, including the Nike Cross Nationals meet, hosted at Glendoveer Golf Course in Northeast Portland. This meet brings together the best high school individuals and teams in America for one winner take all showdown in December. But this year, one team won't have to travel far to compete in this national contest.
After posting a 16th place finish at NXN in 2024, the boys from Jesuit Portland are coming back with a vengeance. Ranked as the preseason second best team in the country, the Crusaders have plenty of hype surrounding them this season. The team, led by a rising superstar in senior, Notre Dame commit Kellen Williams (ranked at #13 in the Dyestat preseason individual rankings), also includes senior Jackson Welsh, who won last year's Metro league district meet in the 800 meters. They are also joined by seniors Matthew Wroblewski, a University of Portland commit who represented Jesuit at the state meet in the 3000 meters this past year and placed second to Williams at last year's district track meet; Liam Donnelly, who scored for the Crusaders at both last year's state cross country meet and national meet; and Brayden Fletcher, who placed 11th at the state cross country meet in 2023 as a sophomore, and 17th last year as a Junior. These seniors are the core of this Jesuit team, after only losing two seniors from last year's team.
“It’s [the] five guys from last year's district team that scored. We set a record [for team spread] at the district meet,” said senior Jackson Welsh.
“We didn’t really need to reload,” remarked senior Kellen Williams.
While they may not have needed to reload, they certainly found a way to fill the two open spots on varsity. Sophomore Jack Lavier, who was the 8th man on the team last year, will step up this year for the Crusaders, flanked by fellow sophomore Brady Lucasiewitz. Lucasiewitz is a new face on this Jesuit squad, as he transferred into Jesuit this year from Central Catholic. Lucasiewitz, who placed 20th at last year's state championship meet as a freshman, only serves to further the Crusaders depth that they have stacked behind their core five returners.
“We want to create a culture that feels like family,” Donnelly said. “ Especially with two newcomers on to varsity, that they feel welcome to the team and not to be scared of the opportunity at hand”.
“[It] will be really important for us when we’ll need them, especially this postseason”.
This depth will prove incredibly important when Jesuit faces regional and national powerhouses later in the season.
“Within the state, probably our greatest competition is Central Catholic,” Williams stated. “But, outside the state, we get some more challenges. Really good teams that are ranked nationally, such as Bozeman, Montana and Coeur d’Alene [Idaho]”.
These teams are both currently among the top 30 teams in the country, with Coeur d’Alene being ranked at seventh, just behind Jesuit. Jesuit will face them and many others on November 15th at NXR NW, where they will try to earn a spot on the starting line at Nike Cross Nationals.
Welsh added that “you never can put anybody past you.”
Senior Liam Donnelly also reiterated that it was “really important to acknowledge these teams… especially in this state and region” but that they “have the confidence going into the season that we can beat every single one of them.”
This confidence is partially due to the hard work the team has been putting in over the summer, as they held practice every day at 9 am.
“We run together every day,” said Welsh. “We meet at practice everyday, we talk.”
This type of chemistry is vitally important to the success of the team, as cross country teams can only be as strong as its weakest runner.
“We get to be a team this year, unlike track where you’re kind of more running alone,” said Welsh. “We get to run together and push each other as hard as we can each day at practice, with workouts and even just normal runs, we get to build our team and just see how good we can be, hopefully [to] compete at a national level and place well for how we’re ranked.”
The key to competing at the state, regional and even national level is, according to Welsh, that they must “get workouts done successfully and stay healthy” and that “if everyone can stay healthy, it will be on our terms, [and] no one can really stop us other than ourselves”.
For the seniors, this is one final ride with a team that may be one of the greatest ever assembled, not just at Jesuit or in Oregon, but nationally. The team most recently posted the fastest team average in the country so far this year over 5000m on September 20th at the Mook, averaging 14:53 across their top 5 runners. This is the third fastest team average in national history, beating out the historic 2021 Jesuit team that placed third at the Garmin Runninglane National Championships.
“I think this season is really important to us because we haven’t seen talent like this before,” Donnelly said. “We are all so close together [in time] and it would be really meaningful just to have a great season”.
Williams also added that since it was senior year, it was a “last hurrah” and that they wanted to “leave everything on the table.”.
The Crusaders' wealth of experience will also be vital to their success. For Matthew Wroblewski and Kellen Williams, this will be their third trip to the national finals, as both were members of the 2022 squad that finished second. For the other three seniors, it will be their second appearance.
Senior Brayden Fletcher commented that being to NXN before meant that “there’s not as much stress and as much pressure, [because] we already know what to expect” and Donnelly added that “it allows us not to get distracted by outside stuff, [all] the attention, [and] it allows us to be more focused on ourselves”. Williams also emphasized that “experience is everything, you're never going to find that much competition in one spot, [and] there’s nowhere in the world where you're going to race all of the top 50 runners [in the country] in one race”.
While this task may seem daunting, the men of Jesuit are ready for the challenge. They have done the work, and now, they get to reap the rewards. They will, if all goes according to plan, line up on December 6th at Glendoveer Golf Course, at Nike Cross Nationals; toe the line as they have done so many times before, and leave it all out there on the course, one final time; for each other, for the school and for themselves.
