VERONA, WISCONSIN, November 23 — Diljeet Taylor has had her share of ups and downs over her 8 years as women’s cross country head at BYU. Certainly, there are many more highs — with a NCAA win in 2020–21 and 7 top-10 finishes — and just as surely there was no greater disappointment than last year’s NCAA Championships when her squad led early in the race only to fade to 14th.
Turns out that in many ways that debacle propelled this year’s women’s squad to run away with the leadoff leg of BYU’s sweep of the NCAA Cross team titles.
“Last year we had one of the best teams in the country,” Taylor says, “we were leading at 2K and we completely crumbled and we walk away 14th. To come back a year later and win this thing in a confident way is just so inspiring.”
The NCAA win was the perfect ending to a less than perfect season amid the challenges of staying healthy while taking on high intensity training and racing.
BYU is seldom short on talent and Taylor readily admits, “I knew I had the pieces early on, but it was not the perfect build. About a month and a half ago, I told the team we’ve got to embrace the imperfect. These setbacks are going to happen and that was our motto this year.
Taylor’s harriers faced high-level competition at every turn including season-long matches with Mike Smith’s talented Northern Arizona squad that edged the Cougars 52–65 at Notre Dame’s Piane Invitational on October 04. Two weeks later at Pre-Nats, BYU’s first tour of the Zimmer 6K turned out spectacularly with a 105-point score, 51 clear of the field.
A bit unexpected for Taylor: “We won Pre-Nats and it was almost an accidental win. We were just focusing on working on the team chemistry and kind of closing the gap.”
Yet another strong run to win their Big 12 Conference debut at Baylor came with some exit wounds as NCAA 10K 6th-placer Jenna Hutchins was lost for the season and Olympic Trials steeple finalist Lexy Halladay-Lowry limped away from the finishline.
Not a good look for Coach Taylor heading into the NCAA races. “At conference you want to win but we lose Jenna Hutchins, who’s a key piece of our top 5 and then we lost Lexy for the last couple weeks; she was in the pool swimming and doing some cross-training.” Halladay-Lowry sat out for the Cougars’ 52–65 win over NAU at the Mountain Regional.
Taylor’s squad was ready for this. “We just embraced it,” she says. “We embraced the imperfect and other women stepped up and the depth of our pack has been phenomenal.”
The Cougars headed to Madison with NCAA redemption on their minds, and a “4-3” race plan for a course that has served their mountain-grown fitness well.
“We changed up a lot of our traditions this year coming into the NCAA Championships,” says Taylor. “We always wear white at nationals, that’s our tradition, today we wore Royal. Part of that maybe was a little bit of PTSD from last year. I just wanted to change it up.”
Beyond the kit, Taylor had a plan. Previously the coach had crafted a successful strategy for success at two nationals on the same weekend in ’21. This time, she explains, “If I was a basketball coach and I’m talking about an offense, we ran a 4-3. We’re going to put four in the front and we got three in the back. The race plan was to get out with some urgency, settle in the middle, and finish with some urgency.”
As the field looped around the rolling Zimmer layout, Taylor watched the plan take shape amid the chaotic stream of speedy harriers. “At 2K, I saw that we got out really well and we were sitting right behind NAU. It’s like, ‘OK, we had some urgency there and then we settled.’ You saw the score moving a little bit and I was like, ‘OK, we’re patient.’
“At 4K, I was very confident that my team was going to win because I could see it in their faces, they were committed to the fight. I trusted the training, I knew they had the fitness to close hard if they were in a good position and they were calm. For me, it wasn’t really a test of fitness, it was a test of how composed can they stay when it’s on the line, and my women were very composed.”
As for that 4-3 plan, “Lexy Halladay-Lowry (14th), Carmen Alder (31st), Riley Chamberlain (39th) and Taylor Rohatinsky (43rd), were huge for us today. I mean, that’s 4 women in the top 43. For Lexy, that was a little bit more of a conservative approach after the last couple weeks. Out of those 3 in back, we had a good idea that Carly Hanson (59th) would be the No. 5.”
It turned out to be a redemption day for Taylor and her resilient team. “I’m very proud of the composure, the character, the growth, the grit that these women have,” she says. “I said the entire season there was something different about them. They ran for each other and figured out a way to fight their own battles and they let go of individual success and focused on the team. That’s what’s cross country is all about and that’s when magic happens.”
