AMHERST, N.Y. -- The Daemen University men's cross country team was picked second in the 2026 East Coast Conference Preseason Coaches Poll, released on Wednesday morning. Additionally, defending ECC Most Outstanding Runner CJ Johnson (Baltimore, Md.) was named the Men's Preseason Runner of the Year. 

The Wildcats earned one first place vote and collected 40 points overall, just eight points shy of the 11-time defending ECC champions Roberts Wesleyan University, who finished with 48 points and six first-place votes. Molloy University (33 points) finished third in the poll. St. Thomas Aquinas College (30), D'Youville University (18), Queens (13) and Staten Island (12) rounded out the rest of the poll. 

Johnson, a rising senior, is the first Daemen men's cross country runner to earn ECC Preseason Runner of the Year after an incredible junior campaign in 2025. As the first men's cross country runner to earn ECC Rookie of the Year in his freshman year in 2023, Johnson returned to the field a year ago after missing the majority of his sophomore season with injury. In his dominant junior season as Daemen's top runner, he paced the Wildcats in five of the six meets on the year and became the first Daemen runner to win the ECC Championships, earning ECC Most Outstanding Runner with a time of 26:24.8 to place first out of 67 runners and First Team All-ECC honors.

Johnson followed up his all-conference performance by earning USTFCCCA All-East Region honors as he placed 7th out of 112 runners with a 10K time of 32:18.8 at the NCAA Division II East Region Championship and punched his ticket to the NCAA Division II National Championships earning an at-large bid. He became the first Daemen men's runner to race at Nationals, finishing 211th out of 259 runners with a time of 32:53.4. 

Coming off a stellar 2025 season in which the Wildcats finished second in the conference meet for the fourth straight season, Daemen returns four of their top five runners, including Johnson and fellow senior Ethan Keating (Wooster, Ohio) who returns for his fourth season after an impressive junior campaign in which he earned First Team All-ECC and USTFCCCA All-East Region honors. Simon Evans (Galway, N.Y.) and Ibrahim Hakizimana (Rochester, N.Y.) both earned all-conference accolades in their first year with the Wildcats, with Evans being named to the All-ECC First Team with a seventh place finish at the ECC Championships and Hakizimana earning Second Team All-ECC honors. 

The Wildcats will run in six meets during the 2026 campaign, beginning with the Doug Watts Open on Saturday, Sept. 5 in Edinboro, Pa. The 2026 ECC Championships will be held in Rochester, N.Y. hosted by Roberts Wesleyan on Saturday, Nov. 7.