By Steve Carpenter
Hutchinson CC Sports Information Director
With the 2025 season-opening race on tap for Friday night, the Hutchinson Community College men's cross country team knows there are going to be plenty of eyes watching them this season.After matching the best national finish in team history with a third-place finish in the 2024 Division I National Championships, 4 of the top 5 runners from that team are back to defend their Jayhawk West and Region 6 titles and perhaps climb a little higher in the national championship podium in November.
"Our guys have had a great summer training and they have lot of momentum going from last fall," said third-year Blue Dragon head coach Jafet Molinares. "Tomorrow night, we are going to just try and knock some rust off and then just better each and every week."
The 2025 Blue Dragons open the season ranked fourth in the USTFCCCA/NJCAA Division I men's preseason rankings. Iowa Western, Butler and Iowa Central are the only teams ranked ahead of the Blue Dragons.
Hutchinson opens its season on Friday with the annual Terry Masterson Twilight Classic at Fun Valley. The Blue Dragons' first 8K race will be September 20 at the Missouri Southern Stampede in Joplin, Missouri.
Molinares said that he returns more top-level runners to a single team than he ever has before.
All 4 of those runners currently reside in the All-Time Blue Dragon Performances at 8,000 meters: 1. Titus Kiprotich – 23:56.9; 2. Dennis Cheruiyot – 23:58.9; 3. Cornelius Kogo – 23:50.50 and 8. Farrin Mangelson – 24:28.3. Kiprotich and Cheruiyot traded the school 8K record for the final three meets of the season.
Kiprotich (Iten, Kenya) finished ninth and Cheruiyot (Eldoret, Kenya) was 10th at the national championships last season and Cheruiyot enters the season as the defending Region 6 and Jayhawk West Champions. Mangelson (San Antonio, Texas) and Kogo (Eldoret, Kenya) finished 21st and 28th, respectively, at nationals to earn NJCAA Coaches Association All-America awards.
Kiprotich and Cheruiyot traded the program 8K record in each of the final three races last season.
" The depth we have at the top is honestly really exciting," Molinares said. "They have trained so hard for this fall. It's a great time to be a Blue Dragon."
The three incoming freshman will provide depth for 2025.
The freshmen are Esteban Ortega (Bogota, Columbia), Esteban Oses (Palmares, Costa Rica) and Mat Ryan (Hutchinson Trinity Catholic.
Ortega just competed for Columbia in the Junior Pan-American games. On August 21, Ortega placed fourth in the 10,000 meters with a time of 31:19.2.
"He's going to be a Top 5 runner for us," Molinares said. "He's more of a distance-oriented type runner.
"We will see how those guys develop."
The Blue Dragons will be part of a very deep Region 6 this season with Butler starting the year No. 2, Hutchinson is No. 4, Garden City is No. 12, Colby is No. 19, Fort Hays Tech Northwest is No. 20, Dodge City is No. 22 and Cloud County is No. 23 in the preseason national rankings.
As far as the Masterson on Friday, the women's race starts at 8:30 p.m. with the men's race beginning around 9:05 p.m. The course will be soft with the rain that has fallen over the last week.
"There are going to be some muddy spots, but the exciting part about this race is that the course is going to be a true cross-country feel. Tomorrow night you through the times out the window and just compete."