Razorback runner Timothy Chesondin set a new course and meet record at the 37th Chile Pepper Festival, finishing the Agri Park 8k in 22 minutes, 53.6 seconds. His performance led the Arkansas men’s cross country team to a first-place finish among 31 teams.
Arkansas scored 40 points, surpassing Texas with 56 points, Northwest Missouri with 103, Stephen F. Austin with 118, and Oral Roberts with 241. The event took place at Agri Park in Fayetteville.
“First and foremost it’s about winning,” said Arkansas men’s coach Chris Bucknam. “We want to win the race, that’s what we line up to do. That’s our No. 1 priority.
“I’m very happy with our performance, placing four in the top five. Very pleased with how we ran, for the most part as a team. But as you can see we have a big gap between our fourth and fifth guy. We have a lot of work to do to close that gap.”
Chesondin broke the previous course record of 22:57.0 set by former Razorback Kirami Yego in 2024. Other top Arkansas finishers included Brian Masai (second place, 23:10.2), James Sankei (fourth place, 23:31.3), and Ben Shearer (fifth place, 23:38.4). Abraham Chelangam from Oral Roberts finished third in 23:29.3.
The combined finishes of Chesondin, Masai, Sankei, and Shearer gave Arkansas an initial tally of just twelve points before Jack Williams placed twenty-eighth (24:43.4) as their fifth scorer to bring the total team score to forty points.
Texas was led by Nathanael Berhane who finished sixth overall in a time of 23:53.1; their scoring runners placed seventh, ninth, tenth, eleventh and nineteenth.
Additional Arkansas runners included Eli Seavy (forty-sixth place in 25:02.7) and Donovan Bitticks (one hundred sixty-seventh place in 26:36.3) out of a field of two hundred eighty-five finishers.
“We held out one athlete out for this race, so that person may be able to go in there and help us in that fifth slot,” Bucknam added.
“I’m very pleased with the top four guys for sure,” Bucknam continued.”Timothy set a course record on a warm day.The course is in great shape and so he basically ran by himself pretty much the whole way.This is an accurate eight-kilometer course so it’s an accurate assessment of where he’s at.”
