How faith in God — and in each other — fuels BYU’s championship runners

The night before Lexy Halladay-Lowry took to Wisconsin’s famous Nuttycombe course for the final cross-country race of her college career, she asked God for help.
By that point, she’d been in the Madison area with her team for two days making final preparations, including by running through rain and snow Thursday. Together, they scoured the course and finalized their strategies, talking about how the cold weather could give them an advantage over southern schools.
The next morning, she and more than 250 other women runners would take on the fast, firm course in front of 6,000 fans. But Friday night, Halladay-Lowry was focused on God and her teammates, not the finish line.
“I was just talking to God, and I was like, ‘This is my last one and I don’t want it to be about me. Help me do it for each other,’” she said.
It was a request befitting a runner who’s spent five years in a program built around faith in God and faithfulness to your team. BYU’s cross-country athletes are taught to take care of one another, even as they chase individual goals.
“I feel very blessed. Coach T (Diljeet Taylor) has cultivated that throughout my entire career here. When I came in as a freshman, that year I rode on the backs of the women before me, and I saw the way they treated each other and the way they treated the underclassmen,” Halladay-Lowry said.
In joyous moments, BYU runners celebrate together. In tough ones, they lean on each other — and on God.
Their focus on faith and family goes beyond praying before competitions or thanking God in interviews, practices that are common in the world of sports. At BYU, runners are taught to prioritize religion and relationships in all that they do.
“I think that our faith in God allows us to have faith and belief in ourselves because we know who we are and our worth,” said James Corrigan, a member of the BYU cross-country team who competed in the steeplechase at the Olympics this summer. “That as our base allows us to run with a lot of hope and without being scared of the consequences.”
Halladay-Lowry’s Friday night prayer was the continuation of a long conversation.
During what she described as a “very, very imperfect” season, she and her teammates turned to God often to work through injuries, illnesses and uncertainty.
“I know personally … I was talking to God like every day,” Halladay-Lowry said.
The prayers took on more urgency in recent weeks, as she rehabbed an injury with the national championship race quickly approaching.
On Saturday, Halladay-Lowry prayed one more time with her teammates right before the starter pistol went off. Coach Taylor said she offered the prayer herself and tried to leave her women with a sense of peace.
“I have a tradition at national championships that I say the prayer. It’s something that’s super uncomfortable for me actually,” she said.
Taylor, a Sikh coach at a school sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, later added that she pushes through the discomfort because she wants the runners to feel God’s love and her love during the race.
With that message in mind, Halladay-Lowry was able to not only compete but to finish 14th. She was the top finisher among the BYU women.
“Lexy was pretty much a mermaid in the month of November. … She spent more time in the pool than she did on the ground,” Taylor said after the race. “I coach her, and I’m in shock that that finish is what happened.”
Behind Halladay-Lowry’s performance, the BYU women claimed the championship trophy. The competition came down to the final 1K of the 6K course, and BYU was able to finish stronger than other top teams.
“Getting to 5K was about getting your job done. The last kilometer was about giving whatever you had for the sisterhood,” Halladay-Lowry said. “I think that’s why we went with 1K to go. It wasn’t for us, it was for who we were running with.”
Once across the finish line, the BYU runners hugged, cried and then prayed again.
Taylor said the prayer helped the emotions of the big win sink in.
“I just wanted those women to remember this moment and what it feels like and so I thought we should take a second to just pay gratitude to God and hopefully have them keep this memory etched in their memory for years to come,” she said.
Halladay-Lowry said it was a fitting ending to a season spent talking with God.
“That was just a prayer of gratitude, a prayer of getting us to the line, through the course and to the end,” she said.
Minutes after that post-race prayer, the BYU men’s team stood at the start line ready to pick up where the women’s team left off.
Their goal for their 10K was not only to win, but to honor their shared mission: “Focus on gratitude. Focus on your brothers.”
Kenneth Rooks, a former BYU runner who won a silver medal in the steeplechase at this summer’s Olympics and still trains with coach Ed Eyestone and the BYU men, offered support from the sideline. He had “BYU” and the Y logo painted on his bare chest as he darted to different viewing points, keeping up with the team.
Rooks said he wanted to be there to cheer his training partners and former teammates on because the program is like a family. Everyone encourages each other.
“I love this team. I feel like they’re my brothers,” he said.
That closeness, as well as their focus on faith, helps the BYU men succeed, Rooks added.
“We try to draw strength from our faith and through Jesus Christ as we get ready and as we work every day. Trust in him and trust in the work that we’ve put in together. That’s what we find confidence in,” he said.
Unlike the BYU women on Saturday, the BYU men built a big lead early and then held onto it until the end. They placed five runners in the top 50, which was enough to beat runner-up Iowa State by 13 points.
Their win completed the sweep, making BYU the first school in 20 years to win the men’s and women’s national cross-country championship in the same season, as the Deseret News reported.
When runner Davin Thompson from the BYU men’s team was asked about the mentality that made the results possible, he once again put a spotlight on togetherness and faith.
“The last week we’ve just been focusing on gratitude and trusting in the work we put in, trusting in each other and trusting in God,” he said.
Although it may seem natural for a faith-based school to produce faith-focused athletic teams, BYU’s running coaches intentionally cultivate an atmosphere in which religion and relationships are given more weight than what happens in races.
As Taylor puts it, she wants to build great women, not just great runners.
“(The championship) is a piece of that but it’s not the whole thing,” she said during a pre-race press conference on Friday. “I put a lot of time and energy into making sure … when they walk away from this sport in four years or five that they’re grateful for the memories they’ve created and the bond that they have. Sometimes that happens on the course and sometimes it happens at my dinner table.”
Halladay-Lowry’s dad, Scot Halladay, said he’s seen that work pay off for his daughter.
“It’s just a great atmosphere,” he said ahead of the championship race.
Saturday night, Taylor and Eyestone continued their work of building unified, faithful men and women by bringing their teams — with their trophies in tow — to a devotional event for young Latter-day Saints in the Madison area.
The two coaches, Halladay-Lowry and men’s team member Joey Nokes spoke about the NCAA championship and the whole season with the assembled crowd, which included several people who had braved the cold that morning to cheer on the teams.
The power of prayer came up again and again in their addresses, including when Nokes described what happened that morning once the trophies were handed out, the photos were taken and the fans had left.
“Out of all the prayers that were said, I think one prayer was most important, (it) was after the race. The crowds dispersed, and there (was) only us men and women left there. We got together and bowed our heads. Coach Eyestone gave us a prayer, and it was a prayer of gratitude, not for the victory, but for our bodies and for our team. It was for the ability to race hard and for each other,” he said.