HONOLULU, Hawai'i – Noah Plaza and Spencer Handorf finished second and third overall to springboard the Concordia men's cross country team to a historic third place finish at the 2025 PacWest Conference Cross Country Championships.

Plaza and Handorf led the charge and secured First Team All-Conference honors with outstanding races. Plaza became the program's first male cross country runner to earn First Team All-PacWest in back-to-back seasons after he finished seventh overall last fall.

Handorf also is now a two-time All-Conference finisher as he was Third Team All-PacWest in 2024 when he finished 19th.

In addition to placing two individual runners in the top three, Concordia saw freshman Dante Maldonado leap into 14th place as a Second Team All-Conference performer. Senior teammate Moises Benito was close behind and garnered Third Team All-Conference honors by placing 16th.

This also marks the second straight year that the CUI men can showcase having four All-Conference cross country runners. Senior Gavin Hellerstedt almost made it five as he finished 22nd to round out the top five scorers for CUI.

As a group, the Golden Eagles landed their best combined finish in the NCAA DII era - easily beating last year's third place total of 78 points. In fact, CUI almost clipped Fresno Pacific in the battle for second place. The Sunbirds wounded up with 53 total points and the Golden Eagles were right behind with 57 from their Top Five unit.

More CUI freshmen had solid performance in Hawaii too as Owen Stults made the Top 25 cutoff, Logan Jones was Top 30 and Nathan Nguyen was only 12 seconds behind Jones. Sophomores Jonathan Warrick and Bryce Philbeck also clocked times of 28:00 or faster in the men's 8K.

Biola junior Melt Von Molendorff was the only one ahead of the Concordia duo of Plaza and Handorf as he helped the Red and Black repeat as PacWest Champs.

CLICK HERE for the full CUI men's results
 
CLICK HERE for the full CUI men's cross country schedule

The CUI women's cross country team placed fourth overall. The ladies were led by Ania Kapustka, who placed fourth and was First Team All-Conference, and Elizabeth King who was Second Team All-Conference and cracked the Top 10.

CLICK HERE to see how the CUI women's team claimed 4th