Senior Cross Country Runner Alex Peters has been selected to run in the Men’s 8k at the 2024 NCAA Division III Championships in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Nov. 23.
Peters will be Whitworth’s lone representative after qualifying on Nov. 10 in the NCAA Division III West Regional meet down in Oregon. Peters needed to finish in the top seven among participants not belonging to schools that had already qualified as a team. He finished 15th overall with a time of 24:39.7. Among non-qualified individuals, Peters finished seventh, thus clinching his spot in the Championships.
“Alex broke a lot of records in the spring in track, so coming into this fall, he had a lot of high hopes, said Cross Country Head Coach Toby Schwarz. “We thought there was a lot of potential for him to do well.”
Peters will be joined by a small contingent of coaches and supporters in Indiana, including Schwarz, Assistant Coach Jeff Rahn, and teammate James Dugenet. Dugenet has been Peters’ training partner throughout the offseason and has helped push him to new heights over the course of their careers at Whitworth.
Alex isn’t the only runner in the Peters family. His older sister runs cross country in Utah and recently qualified for the Division I Championships that are taking place in Wisconsin at the same time. Due to the inconvenient timing, Peters’ parents won’t be able to attend either of their races. His dad will be in Wisconsin supporting his sister while his mom is in Indiana cheering him on in his race.
Now, in his fourth year of running for the Pirates, this will be Peters’ first time qualifying for the Championships and the first time any male individual at Whitworth has qualified since Christopher MacMurray did it in 2015. He hopes his success helps other runners on the team realize what they, too, can accomplish and builds momentum for the team’s future with a goal of qualifying as a team.
“I know that I’m not going to be the last Whitworth runner to make nationals,” said Peters. “…I’m just cracking the door, and then the floodgates are going to open for the rest of the guys.”
Although this is Peters’ last season of eligibility for cross country, he will return for the indoor and outdoor track seasons. Coach Schwarz says that the experience and success Alex had this fall will be of valuable impact to those teams, and he expects Alex to continue having success on the track into the winter and spring.
