NMU cross country runs at today’s league finals
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MARQUETTE -- The women's cross country team at Northern Michigan University has entered the championship part of its season with a trip to northwestern Indiana today.
The Wildcats will be part of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Championships to be held in Hammond, Indiana, at the Purdue Northwest Westville Campus Cross Country Course.
The women's race is scheduled for 1 p.m. EST.
NMU is trying to match or even exceed its program-best runner-up finish at the 2025 conference meet, and has shown it is capable of that during the regular season.
Northern won the Warrior Challenge hosted by Wayne State less than two weeks ago, also finishing as runner-up at two other meets -- the Phoenix Open hosted by NCAA Division I Wisconsin-Green Bay on Sept. 12, and the Lucian Rosa Invitational hosted by Wisconsin-Parkside on Oct. 10.
There was only one other scoring meet, the Roy Griak Invite hosted by Big Ten member University of Minnesota, where the Wildcats placed 10th in an all-division field on Sept. 18.
These results have earned NMU the No. 5 ranking in the Midwest Region and just outside the top 30 in the nation.
Last year's second-place finish was the Wildcats' run-up to a fourth-place showing at the NCAA D-II Midwest Regional, where they came in fourth to qualify for the NCAA Championships for the first time since 2017.
There, the Wildcats came in 24th on the same course the Midwest Regional was held, which also happens to be the same Parkside course that the Lucian Rosa Invite is held at annually. NMU attained a national ranking as high as No. 12 in 2025, too.
With All-American Madi Szymanski leading them, several current Northern runners were also key components in last year's success.
They include 2025 All-GLIAC honorees Ashley Choponis and Lamar Gordon, who should figure heavily into any success the Wildcats have today.
But leading this year's NMU team has been junior Ella DeBruyn, who has won individual titles at Northern's last two meets, the Lucian Rosa and Warrior Challenge.
She also has earned GLIAC Women's Cross Country Athlete of the Week twice this season.
At the Lucian Rosa, she won against a field of 210 runners on the six-kilometer (3.7-mile) course in 22 minutes, 12.84 seconds, more than 2 1/2 seconds ahead of the runner-up. She was reported to have been in second place at the halfway point, surging into the lead with about 400 meters remaining.
Then at the Warrior Challenge, she was even better in 21:29.9 to edge the University of Indianapolis' Elise Peckinpaugh by just over two seconds.
DeBruyn also led NMU at the Roy Griak in Minnesota earlier in the season, setting her personal mark in 21:21.3 to finish 49th overall and fifth in Division II.
Also in Minneapolis, Choponis clocked 21:35.0 and Gordon 21:35.4 to finish back-to-back, 65th and 66th, respectively, and ninth and 10th in D-II.
Continuing with the Roy Griak, junior Lola Korpi, an Ishpeming High School graduate, had a career-best 21:56.5, as did freshman Macy Guikema in 22:10.3 and junior Anya VanSweden in 22:11.2.
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Northern Michigan University's Ella DeBruyn leads the field of Wildcat runners and would win the NMU Wildcat Open cross country meet held near the Superior Dome in Marquette on Aug. 21. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)