A Trailblazer

The bar has been set high for Matro Jepkemboi, who was the Western Athletic Conference’s (WAC) women’s cross-country Freshman of the Year last fall and became the fourth UTA woman ever to qualify for the NCAA Division I championship meet.

“I want to be an All-American,” the soft-spoken Kenyan says. To accomplish that, she must return to the meet and finish in the top 40. She placed 85th last November at the University of Virginia, 12th among the freshmen in the 6k race.

“If she was just four strides better, she probably would have been in the 50s,” veteran UTA coach John Sauerhage says. “She put up a great fight, got out there, and gave it her best effort.”

The temperatures that day were in the low 60s under sunny skies. “But it was windy,” Jepkemboi recalls. “When you’re trying to push moving forward, it’s so hard to move.”

“There were a lot of people in that race—254 entries,” says Sauerhage, who has coached UTA cross country since 1989. “She did a great job. We were very happy to be there and very excited about everything we have in front of us.”

Jepkemboi, a nursing major, allowed her running to immediately do the talking last fall. She placed in the top 10 in all five meets that she ran, finishing second in each of her first two competitions. Her performances helped the Lady Mavs finish third in the WAC team standings after being picked to place fourth in preseason polling.

“It was a great season for us,” she says.

Jepkemboi naturally ran in high school but also played basketball and a basketball offshoot called netball. “I was not good at basketball,” the diminutive Jepkemboi confesses with a smile.

Jepkemboi is the third of five children and one of three members of the women’s team from Eldoret, Kenya, along with Mercy Biwott, who transferred from Western Iowa Junior College, and fellow freshman Winnie Kipsang. Jepkemboi and Kipsang each earned 3.7 grade-point averages in their first college semester.