* Ashland's Evan Holland broke a course record that stood for five years
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National champion hopeful Evan Holland ran his best race of the season at the Oregon State Cross Country Championships on Saturday, breaking a record that had stood for five years.
And he shattered it.
The Ashland (OR) High School senior, an Oregon commit, ran 14:30.40 in the Class 5A race, surpassing Summit graduate Matthew Maton's old mark of 14:45.00 from 2014.
Holland is now one of four runners to ever break 15 minutes on the Lane Community College 5K Course. That list also includes the likes of Galen Rupp and Lauren Jesperson.
This wasn't out of nowhere, though. Holland has been measured all season.
The state championships on Saturday represented just his fifth race of the season, while Ashland, which had performed well at the Northwest Classic and the Warner Pacific Invitational, had been surging at the right time.
Along with Holland's record, Ashland won the team title, scoring 41 points across a 15:25 spread. Holland's performance underscored the potential of Ashland's potential as a team at the national level. The performance stacks up among some of the best teams in the country.
Meanwhile, the win represented Holland's 12th in a row on Oregon soil since September of 2018. He's a returning All-American from NXN, where he placed 16th in 2018.
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