Christians announces first 2020 Men's XC signee

BELLEVUE, Neb. -- Bellevue University cross country coach Craig Christians announced today the signing of Gabe Poppen (Glenwood, Iowa/Cornerstone Christian) to a Letter of Intent to continue his academic and athletic careers at Bellevue beginning in the fall of 2020.

Poppen was a member of Cornerstone's first state qualifying team in any sport in school history (Nebraska Class D) when he was a varsity member of the cross country team as a junior. It was his first year of running cross country as he was coming from a sprinting and jumping background on the track team. He ran a good time for a first year cross country runner, covering 5K in 19:30 and finishing 84^th overall.

A year later, Cornerstone again qualified as a team and Gabe had improved his 5K time to 18:24 and finished 39^th in the Class D State Meet.

Poppen excelled in track as well, running the 100M, 200M, and multiple relays in addition to both long and triple jumping. He won the Frontier Conference titles in the 100M and 200M as a junior running 11.85 and 24.87 seconds, respectively. His personal bests are 11.69 and 23.74. He narrowly missed qualifying for the state track meet with two third place finishes at the District where the top two finishers qualify. He also has personal bests of 20 feet, 1 inch in the long jump and 38 feet, ¾" in the triple jump.

Also a member of his high school's varsity basketball team, Poppen was regularly among the top students at Cornerstone. He plans to study Cybersecurity at BU.

Coach Christians on Poppen:

"I am really excited about adding Gabe to our team. I believe he has tremendous potential as a cross country runner and is just scratching the surface of what he might do. He obviously brings a great deal of athletic ability, having sprinted, jumped, and played basketball at a high level at Cornerstone. I'm excited to be able to expand our range of events for track as I expect Gabe to continue sprinting and jumping for us. On top of his athletic ability, he is an outstanding student and will be a good fit with our team."

Poppen is the first announced men's cross country signee in the Bruins' 2020 recruiting class.

In just their second year of competition in 2019, the BU men's cross country team earned a fourth place finish at the NSAA Cross Country Championships and sixth place at the NSAA Indoor Track and Field Championships.