This past Friday, the Notre Dame men’s and women’s cross country teams travelled down to Louisville, Kentucky, for the 2025 Atlantic Coast Conference Championships, and both left the meet with top-five team finishes.
The race was held at E.P. “Tom” Sawyer State Park, a 554-acre park on the edge of Louisville. This high-level conference meet featured some of the toughest competition the Irish have faced all season on both the men’s and women’s sides.
Women’s race
In the first race of the postseason, the Irish placed second in the 6,000 meter, with a team score of 89. The Irish finished runner-up to North Carolina State, which dominated the top 10, finishing with a team score of 28. North Carolina rounded out the podium, finishing third with a team score of 127.
Sophomore Mary Bonner Dalton led the way for the Irish as she finished second. Bonner Dalton surged through the final meters of the race, emerging out of the pack to claim a runner-up finish with a time of 19:14.9. In the final meters, Bonner Dalton broke up an NC State 1-2 finish, surging past a struggling Grace Hartman and holding off Clemson’s Silvia Jelego. This marks another personal record for Bonner Dalton, who finished over 25 seconds faster than she did two weeks prior at the Nuttycombe Invitational in Madison, Wisconsin.
The second Irish runner to cross the finish line was freshman Amaya Aramini. Aramini finished 16th with a time of 19:56.2. She also finished second among the freshman runners in the race. Finishing not far behind was a pair of Notre Dame seniors with Siona Chisholm and Sophie Novak, 19th and 22nd, respectively, and rounding out the point-scoring finishers was junior Gretchen Farley, who finished in 20:13.1. Bonner Dalton, Aramini and Chisolm all earned All-ACC honors, which were awarded to the top-21 finishers in the conference meet. The 2025 ACC champion is NC State sophomore Angelina Napoleon, who finished with a time of 19:13.1.
Men’s race
In the men’s 8,000 meter, the Irish finished fourth with a team score of 114. Virginia took the team championship with a score of 61. This was closely followed by Syracuse with a team score of 65, and Wake Forest took third with a score of 111.
Junior Ethan Coleman was the top-finishing Irish runner, finishing seventh overall in a time of 22:55.6. This is the highest Coleman has finished at the conference meet as he also earned his third consecutive All-ACC honors. The next Irish finisher was junior Daelen Ackley who finished 22nd with a time of 23:22. Senior Dylan Throop and sophomore Kevin Sanchez finished back to back for 26th and 27th, respectively. Throop finished in a time of 23:29.5 while Sanchez finished in 23:30.8. Junior Izaiah Steury was the fifth Irish finisher, coming in at 23:34.6 and placing 32nd. The race was won by Wake Forest junior Rocky Hansen, with a winning time of 22:18.6.
As the Irish head into the NCAA’s, the women find themselves ranked fifth nationally in the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Coaches’ Poll for week four and second in the ACC. The men are ranked 16th nationally and fourth in the ACC.
The teams will be back in action at the NCAA Great Lakes Regional in Evansville, Indiana, on Nov. 14. The women’s team is the highest-ranking team in the region while the men are the fourth-highest ranked team. Here, Irish runners will look to prolong both their personal and team season, and reach the NCAA Championship.
