The University of Alaska Fairbanks may be sending fewer individuals to the NCAA Cross Country Championships than it has in any season since 2019, but the Nanooks still could walk away with two All-Americans for the first time in program history.
After the UAF women came four points away from qualifying an entire team for the national meet, the Nanooks will send just two individuals to Joplin, Missouri, for the biggest race of the season on Saturday.
The Nanooks arrived midday Tuesday, flying into Kansas City before making the 2½ half hour drive to the small city bordering Kansas and Oklahoma. They’ve already seen the course, and will a couple more times before the race. Kendall Kramer and Rosie Fordham were pleasantly surprised with host school Missouri Southern State University’s course, which they described as more wooded than anticipated for being on the plains.
“It’s a lot hillier than I expected,” Kramer said. “It’s not even so much like rolling little bumps. I think there are some actual downhills and uphills that maybe some girls are not so used to. There’s a lot of corners.”
Both Kramer and Fordham have won at least two races this fall, with the Nanooks producing the winners of five of the six races they’ve contested between those two. With Kramer in the top-10 (8th) and Fordham just three spots out of All-American honors (43rd) at the 2022 NCAA Championships, they could have lofty goals for this season’s finale.
Both are capable of top-half All-American finishes. But given what they know about championship racing, they’re careful not to place specific placement expectations on themselves. Nor do their coaches think it necessary to dictate how they strategize their race.
“I think that both of them have figured out exactly what they need to do to be successful racing,” assistant coach Conrad Haber said. “And as they did at GNAC and as they did at regionals, they don’t really need to alter that at this meet.”
In addition to last year, the Nanook duo also reached the NCAA Championships in their debut season, 2021, both placing in the top-75. The difference this time around is they had teammate Naomi Bailey joining them each of the previous two seasons. This weekend, it’ll be just Kramer and Fordham toeing the line for UAF alongside over 250 other women.
However, they will have some teammates there to cheer them on and keep them company throughout the week. The other three Nanooks scorers from the West Regional Cross Country Championships (Bailey, Delainey Zock and Teegan Silva), are all joining them in Missouri. That comfort of having their teammates — who were so close to joining them on the national meet course — and their own prior national meet experience should allow them to race confidently.
“I think having two years of experience behind me will probably help to stay focused on the race and not get distracted by [racing against] 250 people,” Fordham said. “It’s a lot, but I think knowing that going in is definitely helpful and knowing how to manage having a lot of people in a race.”
In fact, Kramer expects to toe the starting line with “a sense of calm.”
Training hasn’t necessarily been intensive recently as Kramer and Fordham cruised through the GNAC Championships and West Region Championships, with Kramer winning both and Fordham finishing runner-up in the former. Given they’re both dual sport athletes on UAF’s ski team, also led by coach Eliska Albrigtsen, they’ve been cross-training.
That helps circumvent some of the unique issues the Fairbanks climate raises and takes away some of the time otherwise spent on a treadmill while helping reduce injury risk.
“It’s a mixture of skiing and running,” Kramer said. “We’ve done quite a lot of skiing intensity in the last portion or two or three weeks of the season like we have in previous seasons, just because the running season goes so late. But just shorter running workouts and a lot of skiing.”
Albrigtsen coordinates the skiing and is the head coach on the cross country side as well, but Haber manages much of the day-to-day for the cross country program including planning training and practice. Even just a few months into his first year in Fairbanks, Haber has found himself adapting well to the challenges with weather and conditions.
“I actually kind of like it in some respects because it forces you to be a little bit more creative,” Haber said. “Instead of just going with what you originally thought, you have to make pivots. And I think that also helps everyone involved be more malleable when we’re racing. You’re used to making changes on the fly.”
Even without the rest of their team or even Bailey competing with them on the national stage, Kramer and Fordham can take solace in each other’s presence in the race, and perhaps be buoyed by their teammates’ cheering.
“I think it’s nice to know that we can run sort of together or work off each other, and it’s always good to have a familiar face,” Fordham said. “Whilst we are like very different runners, we sort of know how each other run.”
They may or may not run together on Saturday, but Kramer and Fordham will be representing Fairbanks on the national stage, and those back home will be watching. UAF is hosting a viewing party at the BP Design Theater on the fourth floor of UAF's engineering building on Saturday at 7 a.m., and the race will also be available to stream on NCAA.com.
