Men's Cross Country | 9/4/2026 7:46:00 PM

AMHERST, N.Y. -- The Daemen University men's and women's cross country team opens the 2026 campaign on Saturday at the Doug Watts Open in Edinboro, Pa. The women will run a 5K at 11 AM and the men's 8K will run at 11:45 AM.

Prior to the season opening race, Daemen cross country head coach Pete Gratien, senior CJ Johnson (Baltimore, Md.) and junior Lia Brasacchio (Victor, N.Y.) spoke about their teams and expectations for the 2026 seasons. 

"So far we've had a lot of opportunities to spend time together during preseason. We went on a camping trip to bring everybody closer together to get in some good training. At this point in the season it's hard to assess where we're at, but what I can say is that the team is really working together this season. They're really buying into the concept of team over me, that usually will lead to good things later on," Gratien said of his teams after the preseason. 

The Wildcat men were picked second in the 2026 ECC Preseason Poll and 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. 

"I think junior year for me was just about putting my head down and putting in the work that was necessary. Of course you never go into a season expecting, well you can have high expectations for yourself, but you don't wanna focus on it too much, but I'm really happy with what I did. But as for the team this year, I am very proud of the position that we are in now. I'm very excited to see what everybody is capable of. We had a time trial a couple days ago. This is definitely the fastest I've seen this team be in quite some time, so I'm really excited to see what everybody's gonna be capable of in the weeks to come," Johnson said.

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. 

"When I look at the team, honestly this is still a very young team. We only have three seniors on the team, no juniors, the rest of them are freshmen and sophomores. When I look at the team now, I'm really proud to see that I can see a good legacy forming on this team. We have, as you said, Simon, he's a sophomore, I think he's moving like a senior already. You have the freshmen coming in, they seem excited, they seem ready to go. I'm really happy to see where me, Ethan, and Brad have taken these guys where we will continue to take them. Obviously this is my last year, I'm gonna do the best that I can to make sure I can leave an impact on this team even when I'm gone," Johnson said.

Daemen's women were selected fourth in the ECC Preseason Poll. The 11-time defending ECC champions Roberts Wesleyan University Redhawks finishing with all eight first-place votes and garnering 64 points as a team. Molloy University (54 points) and D'Youville University (47 points) are the conference's top three teams in the preseason poll. The Wildcats collected 42 points to place fourth in the preseason poll. St. Thomas Aquinas College (26), Queens College (25), the College of Staten Island (21) and the University of the District of Columbia (9) round out the rest of the ECC.

"This season, we have other teammates that are stepping up. I'm running with other girls that are just stepping up. They're getting the work and they're putting their best foot forward and we're getting the work done together. I'm really excited for this season. I really love the girls on this team. We had the opportunity to listen to a special guest come to our camping trip, he really put forth a really good message of how we are one team, we are not just individuals. We are together, we are a fist. We are not just six runners, we are one team, we work together through everything, that has really driven our team through the past week and a half," Brasacchio said.

Daemen placed fourth out of eight teams at the 2025 ECC Championships on Long Island, running in the program's 13th ECC Championship and continuing the streak of never finishing worse than fourth as a team. After graduating four, including three of the top runners from the 2025 campaign, the Daemen women will look to find a new Wildcat to pace the team after losing Patsy Oberholzer and Christa Oates to graduation. Rising juniors Lia Brasacchio (Victor, N.Y.) and Kylie Piekarski (Lancaster, N.Y.) put together solid sophomore campaigns. Daemen's top returning runner from last season, Brasacchio finished as the second-place runner in two meets last year and the third-place runner four times while setting two PR's in 2025. Piekarski placed fourth among the Wildcats three times, third once and fifth twice in 2025. 2025 newcomers Raegan Giardini (West Clarksville, N.Y.) and Teagan Jones (Lawrenceville, Pa.) look to improve upon their rookie campaigns this upcoming season. Head coach Pete Gratien brought two new runners to the 2026 squad, adding graduate student Alexis Nguyen (Grand Island, N.Y.) who spent the last four seasons running track for the Wildcats but spent every fall as a member of the Daemen women's soccer team, and incoming freshman Julie Cruz (Amherst, N.Y.). 

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.