ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Concordia-St. Paul women's cross country team gets its 2026 season underway on Friday night, September 4 under the lights at the Augie Twilight at Yankton Trails in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The Golden Bears ended last season with a 15th place finish at the NSIC Championships.
The 2026 squad will feature six runners with a mix of three returners and three incoming freshmen.
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.
CSP opened the 2025 season with a 22nd place finish at the Augie Twilight, led by Nyadio Cahn who ran a personal best 5k time of 19:48.66. Freshman Kayla Anderson ran a 19:49.74 5k time finishing in 84th place in her collegiate debut.
Lauryn Rosenthal finished in 101st place with a time of 20:06.79 in her Collegiate debut and Elise Atkins came in with a time of 23:50.41.
Meet the Team: Returners
CSP returns sophomores Kayla Anderson and Lauryn Rosenthal along with junior Elise Atkins to open the 2026 season. Both Anderson and Rosenthal made strides in their first season in the Navy and Gold throughout the cross country and track and field seasons, and continued to build on that progress in the offseason.
"Kayla Anderson made a significant jump in growth as a distance runner, she came into Concordia as more of a middle distance runner and she has really transformed herself into a distance runner," Head Coach Jonathan Breitbarth said. "Lauryn Rosenthal had a nice end to her season with a pretty significant PR, which was a result of the hard work she put in throughout the year."
Anderson competed in six races in her freshman season, capping of the year with a personal best 6k time of 23:23.7 at the NCAA Central Region Championships. The freshman also managed a 79th place finish at the NSIC Championships with a time of 24:49.30, recording the best individual finish by a CSP women's runner at the event since 2019.
As a result Anderson was tabbed as CSP's Athlete to Watch heading into the 2026 season.
"She [Anderson] had a really good year last year, good summer of training and she did well," Breitbarth said. "She's had another good year of training, and what's been added to it is confidence and expectations."
Rosenthal competed in all six races for the Golden Bears in 2025 and capped the year with a personal best time of 25:11.1 at the NCAA Central Region Championships.
"She's a runner through and through … what I've seen in her training this summer is she's reached a different level in her consistent speed, so to speak," Breitbarth said. "She had a nice PR to end the outdoor season, which really kind of set her up to have confidence in the paces that she does set."
Meet the Team: Newcomers
freshmen Noelle Boyd and Estee VerSteeg join the team in 2026. The group will look to get acclimated to college athletics while also making an impact on the group in year one.
In addition to running cross country VerSteeg will also compete as a member of the CSP Swimming and Diving team. The freshman has Track and Field experience but is new to the sport of cross country, however she did compete in the 800 meter and 1600 meter races in High School, finishing top 10 in both at the state meet.
"She is a talented individual, we had the unique aspect of how do we set up training if she's never done cross country, and her summer has gone how we laid it out," Breitbarth said. "Her previous best for a 5k was 20:20, and at the end of her summer training she went out and did a 5k by herself and she was 18:45. So she had a good minute and a half improvement."
Meet the coaching staff
Joining Breitbarth on the coaching staff 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
"I do think the talent increase and beating teams we have not beat in a couple years will show success and yes, there is a process in maturing and continuing to work hard," Breitbarth said. "I do think where we're at and the importance of things is beating some of the teams we haven't beaten."
The CSP women's cross country team gets the 2026 season underway Friday, September 4 at the Augie Twilight in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
