LA GRANDE — After dominant wins in its first two races, the Eastern Oregon University men’s cross-country team has surged into the top 10 in the nation.

The Mountaineers jumped seven spots in the latest National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics coaches poll, with the Sept. 22, ratings placing Eastern at No. 6, the program’s highest since the 2017 season, when the team reached as high as No. 5 and spent the entire season in the top 10 before finishing seventh.

“Very happy with it,” head coach Ben Welch said. “The guys did a great job over the summer, (and) that’s showing in their performance. Very happy with where they’re at.”

The movement in the rankings comes after Eastern posted 1-2-3 finishes in each of its first two races — the Cascade Collegiate Conference Preview on Sept. 9 and its home EOU Invitational on Sept. 16. Eastern won both races by a wide margin. As a team, EOU scored 17 points (two off the best total possible) to outpace second-place Southern Oregon by 42 points at the CCC Preview. At the home invite, run at La Grande Country Club, the Mountaineers scored 19 points, with runner-up College of Idaho scoring 43 points.

Welch said the strong start to the season has been better than he anticipated.

“A little bit,” he said when asked if the performance surprised him. “They’ve been performing extremely well. … But to go 1-2-3, and with four different guys, and one is not your returning all-American, that is very pleasing.”

Justin Ash and Hunter Nichols have been the proverbial tip of the spear for EOU early, with Ash taking the top two spots in both races and Nichols serving as runner-up. Cristian Mendoza took third in the CCC Preview, and Winston Telford came in third at the EOU Invite.

Ash was well ahead of the competition in the first races, with his time in the CCC Preview of 25:30.2 besting Nichols by more than 19 seconds. At the EOU Invite, Ash completed the shorter 6K course in 18:24.73, ahead of his teammate by more than 21 seconds.

“Tremendous performances. He’s a young man on a mission within a group on a mission,” Welch said of Ash. “He’s physically just so much more advanced then he was last year, and he was good last year and better in the spring. He’s just continued to improve.”

Both races have seen EOU place four runners in the top five, six in the top 10 and at least eight in the top 20, with Welch’s statement at the start of the year of the team being deep ringing true.

The top seven, in only a slightly different order, has been the same in both races: Ash, Nichols, Mendoza and Telford have headed the pack, posting top-five finishes twice, with Travis Running, Jonny Wind and freshman Caleb Brown filling in the next three spots.

The gap between the top five runners — and even the top seven runners — has been small, as well, a key for EOU as the season progresses. In the opening race, just 38.1 seconds was the difference between Ash and Running, the No. 1 and No. 5 runners for EOU. In the second race, the gap was 40.29 between the same positions and, interestingly, the same runners.

Between Ash and Brown — the first and seventh runners — was a time of 1:25.5 in the CCC Preview, and at the EOU Invite, that margin was 1:26.14.

“Anytime your 1-5 is under a minute, and under 45 (seconds) in particular, you’re running a pretty tight pack. Anytime your 1-7 is under a minute and a half, your pack is running really well,” Welch said. “That is part of our strength. I think that is what is surprising the people in the conference the most — how tight of a pack we’re running.”

EOU moved from being the third-ranked CCC team in the preseason poll — behind then-No. 6 C of I and then-No. 10 SOU — to being the conference leader in the rankings. Lewis-Clark State College also saw a major leap, moving from 17th to ninth. Southern Oregon slipped to 11th, and College of Idaho, the preseason conference favorite, dropped 10 spots to 16th. Eastern heads a conference with six teams in the top 25, more than any other conference in the NAIA.

The Mountaineers don’t return to the course until Oct. 1, when they run at the Charles Bowles Invitational in Salem. Welch said the race features NCAA Division I runners as well as NAIA runners, which will provide a good test for his team.

“If we can continue to keep that tight (of a group) or even tighten it up a little bit,” he said, “then we’ll be in really good shape.”