ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Concordia-St. Paul Men's Cross Country team opens the 2026 season on Friday night, September 4, under the lights at the Augie Twilight at Yankton Trails in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The Golden Bears wrapped up the 2025 season with an eighth place finish at the NSIC Championships and a 22nd place finish at the NCAA Central Region Championships. 

Heading into the 2026 season the Golden Bears will feature a team of seven returners and two freshmen, with just one senior on the roster the group will look to make strides as the season progresses, leaning on each other and their relationships with one another. 

"This year more than any other year is going to be dependent on younger individuals making improvement, showing improvement and stepping up," Head Coach Jonathan Breitbarth said. "The old adage of next runner up so to speak." 

Augie Twilight Preview 
The Golden Bears are set to compete under the lights at the 15th annual Augie Twilight hosted by Augustana on Friday, September 4 at Yankton Trails in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The women's 5k race is set to begin at 8:45 p.m. while the men's four mile race starts at 9:15 p.m.

The Golden Bear men managed a 15th place finish at the Augie Twilight last season, with Andrew Alexander leading the pack with a time of 20:17.36 and a 46th place finish. Travis Tock finished in 143rd place with a time of 20:54.5, improving 26 seconds from his finish at the 2024 Augie Twilight. 

Zay Acosta recorded a new personal best four mile time last season, running a 21:07.9 to finish in 166th place. Brock Johsnon finished with a time of 20:56.6 to finish in 133rd place in his collegiate debut. 

Meet the team: Returners
CSP returns seven members of the 2025 team, of which the group is primarily composed of sophomores and juniors with the lone senior of the roster being Josh Krummel. With a group of returners on the younger side there will be plenty of opportunities for each member of the team to make an impact. With so much familiarity in the group of returners one of the key aspects of this season's team is togetherness. 

"We actually do a strength's finder character inventory and our team is pretty heavy on relationship building in terms of their strengths," Breitbarth said. "And that's evident even in the summer, there were times when I just happened to see or hear about them getting together as a team." 

Leading the group of returners heading into the 2026 season is junior Travis Tock, who ended last season with a personal best 10k time of 33:44.0 at the NCAA Central Region Championships, finishing in 188th place and 34th among NSIC competitors. 

Tock also managed a 47th place finish at the NSIC Championships as well, a 48 spot improvement from his freshman season. With a strong finish to last season the junior was named CSP's Athlete to Watch heading into this season. 

"I see him as providing a grittiness to our team and I see him as really showing the way when it comes to the race," Breitbarth said. "Because of his consistency and because of his long distance 10kish type effort. He is going to set the tone just in finishing the whole race and tracking down guys as they get to the finish line." 

The other returning junior to the team is Zay Acosta who competed in four events last season and recorded a personal best 8k time of 27:21.0 at the Lewis Invitational. 

Four of the seven returning members of the team are sophomores with Brock Johnson, Jovani Iglesias, Nathaniel Merrell and Jordan Stumm comprising the group. Johnson makes his return to the cross country course after an injury ended his freshman season in mid-October. 

As a freshman Johnson competed in four races for the Golden Bears, culminating in a personal best 8k time of 26:54.4 at the Lewis Invitational. 

"I see him really picking up where he left off as a pretty high scoring freshman," Breitbarth said. "And even improving on that in a complete sophomore season, he's going to have an impact on our team." 

Meet the Team: Newcomers
The Golden Bear men's cross country team adds a pair of freshmen to the roster this season, with Eoin Schulze and Austin Burgess joining the group. Schulze joins the team by way of Eden, Idaho with Burgess hailing from Cambridge, Minnesota. 

While both freshmen have a bright future with the program, their first season will be spent getting their feet wet at the collegiate level. 

"This year is really going to be about setting the tone, and setting the foundation for a successful career ahead," Breitbart said. "So we're not hurling expectations on them as first years." 

Meet the coaching staff
Joining Breitbarth on the coaching stuff this season is returning assistant coach Anna Sajdak along with a new addition to the staff in Matthew Buns, who will serve as the associate head coach this season. 

Buns returns to the coaching staff after spending eight seasons as a member of the staff from 2015-2023. After taking a step back from the program for three seasons while serving as the chair of the Doctorate of Kinesiology program at Concordia, Buns returns to the cross country program in 2026. 

"We've stayed in touch over the past couple of years and over the last year he would throw out those comments of 'I'm easy to come back' and that type of deal," Breitbarth said. "And we had a conversation at the end of the spring of 'hey are you ready to comeback?'"

Schedule Preview 
The 2026 season will see the Golden Bears compete in four events before the NSIC Championships on Saturday, November 7 at Yankton Trails in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The NCAA Central Region Championships are set to take place on Saturday, November 21 at Yankton Trails in Sioux Falls as well. 

CSP will open the season with a pair of familiar meets with the Augie Twilight on September 4 and the Roy Griak Invitational on Friday, September 18. While the Griak remains a staple of the schedule it will shift locations this season to the Fort Snelling Golf Course, after the sale of the Les Bolstad Golf Course following last season. 

The shift in facility also means a shift in terrain as the course goes from rolling hills to the flatter surface at Fort Snelling. With the shift in location the decision was ultimately made to add two new races to the schedule with the addition of the Lucian Rosa Invite hosted by UW-Parkside and the Winona State Invitational.

"Everything we were going to be competing on was flat and fairly small, so that's why we kind of pivoted to UW-Parkside," Breitbarth said. "It's a wooded, hilly, rolling hills type course on their campus. So we wanted to bring cross country back into the cross country schedule as opposed to just simply running on flat, circular facilities."

Final Thoughts 
"It is all going to depend on in this championships, how can we race together in a more effective way to and be able to pass five, six, seven more more people, because we have a group of three versus each of them kind of having to feel like they're doing all the work alone," Breitbarth said. "The process is not how do we get the whole team faster than the average pace last year, but how do we individually help each of those guys jump up and improve."

The 2026 CSP Men's Cross Country season gets underway Friday, September 4 at the Augie Twilight in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.