MOREHEAD, Ky. –
Aidan Massey is on a roll. The Morehead State cross country doctoral student has run five consecutive races in sub-25-minute times and has now won the Ohio Valley Conference Runner of the Week award after back-to-back meets. This time, Massey is the co-Runner of the Week, sharing the honor with UT Martin's Angus Monro, the league announced Wednesday afternoon.
It is Massey's third career OVC Runner of the Week award, adding to his recognition on September 23, 2026, and October 22, 2025.
On Saturday, Massey finished in 19th overall in the Louisville Cross Country Classic's Gold Division in 24:20.7, an improvement over his career-best time by 8.4 seconds on the 8K course and a 23.7 second improvement over his performance two weeks ago at the Southern Showcase. He is the only Eagle to have gone under 25 minutes in any meet since October of 2022.
It also was the fastest an Eagle male has run since Jarrett Mattingly recorded a 24:17.30 on October 5, 2019, and moved him into fourth on the MSU all-time top performers' list for that distance.
"Yeah, it's definitely cool to get the recognition again and represent MSU. I love this place. We had a group of five guys really get after it at Louisville," Massey said.
Saturday's race also was an outstanding performance for the Eagle team, which finished 18th out of 24 – an improvement over the previous year when the club was 32nd out of 32. In addition, MSU dropped 19 seconds off its average time over the 2025 race.
"Coach mentioned how much quicker our average time was at this last meet, and I think that says a lot about the work the group is putting in," he added. "It's cool to see (Aidan) Whitsell dialed in, upping his volume and having it pay off, and (Ryan) Rich(endollar) cutting about two minutes off his last time was pretty sweet. I really like how our top five is coming together right now. Add Jake (Hagan) back into the mix and it's an even stronger pack. Coach (Clay) Dixon's got a plan for us to keep building on that heading into our home meet. We just have to stay hungry."
Massey's 19th place was the best by an MSU runner at that meet since Justin Moakler was seventh in the Gold Division in 2018 in 23:56.5. It was the second consecutive race he led the Eagle finishers.
"Aidan is having a great season," Morehead State head coach
Clay Dixon said. "He positioned himself in that top pack at Louisville and came out with a 'pr' and a top-20 finish."
At the Louisville meet, Massey, a native of Olathe, Kan., who is in his second season at MSU after transferring from Baker University in Kansas, sat in the middle of a tight bunch of 23 guys who were within 1.6 seconds of the leader at the 2.1K mark. By the 3.9K point, the pack had started to separate, with Massey sitting in seventh 3.4 seconds out of first. By 6K, he was still near the front, essentially tied for 11th. However, over the last 2K, he dropped eight spots.
"Last year I had a pretty good race, but I moved up from around 113th to 43rd. So, this year I really wanted to get out quicker and put myself in a position to compete with the front group from the start," he said. "I was dialed in from when the gun shot off. I got out fast, put myself right behind the leaders and was sitting around the top ten for most of the race. The last three quarters of a mile got pretty tough. My back started locking up, I was breathing pretty hard, and (I had) just a moment of mental weakness in there where I wasn't able to rip it. I ended up falling back to 19th, so that's really the only part of my race I wasn't excited with. But I've got more opportunities to improve on that and finish stronger."
Massey currently sports the third fastest 8K time in the OVC, trailing only Southern Indiana's Alex Nolan (23:38.5) and Jackson Nolan (24:03.7).
Munro is fourth on that list. He is sharing this week's honor with Massey after placing third with his "pr" of 24:26.4 at the CBU Invitational.
The women's award also was split between Southeast Missouri's Nova Ojutkangas and UT Martin's Danielle Mudd. Ojutkangas was fourth at the Nike XC Town Twilight and Mudd was second at the CBU Invitational. Freshman Shelby Lamb was Morehead State's nominee.
The Eagles are off this weekend, before returning next Friday to host their first home meet since the 2023 OVC Championships. The Eagle/Knight Invitational is expected to include between eight and 10 teams and be held at the Eagle Trace Golf Course in Morehead. The women will run at 9 a.m., followed by the men at 9:50 a.m. It will be the final tuneup before the OVC Championships on Oct. 30 in Cape Girardeau, Mo.
