It has taken nearly that long for him to come to terms with that.

“I’m still a little bit in shock, a little bit, about how good the performance was,” said Sayen.

Sayen, along with sophomore Drew Kolodge, finished 16th and 28th, respectively, in the NCAA Championships. Those strong finishes helped the Huskies take 10th as a team, the highest finish in school history.

For those who know the Houghton native, performing this well at the NCAAs was not a big surprise.

Michigan Tech’s Clayton Sayen races in the NCAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday, Dec. 2. (Photo courtesy of Michigan Tech University)

“Honestly, I’ve known I was an All-American-caliber athlete since basically 2019, because, that year, I was 44th,” he said. “The Top 40 are All-American, so that stung a little bit.

“Then last year, I had a really bad day at the national meet, but I’ve known that I was a caliber athlete for several years, just haven’t actually done it.”

After his disappointment in 2019 that he was so close, but not quite good enough, Sayen was ready to bounce back. The world had other ideas. The COVID pandemic cut the season short before it began, so he did not have a chance to try again in 2020. Naturally, other issues came along with COVID, but from those challenges came a renewed sense of self for him.

In 2019, Sayen was nominated to be a team captain, something that he might not have been ready for. When the pandemic hit, he had to deal with a lot of confusion amongst his teammates and the university. Along with the confusion came the coaching change to Kristina Owen.

“That’s really hard for any program, especially because we only had one coach,” Sayen said. “So there’s no one there, really, to kind of keep the ship steered in the right direction.”

Sayen and another other captain had to figure out how to help their teammates while also continuing to be a source of calm with their world seemingly on fire around them.

“That was when myself and another captain kind of took it upon us to, during the time when we had no coach, and when our new coach was hired, kind of keep morale up and keep ships steered right,” he said, “just leading by example, and just communicating with the coaching staff, with other athletes, and just kind of making sure everybody knows what’s going on.”

So, with all those challenges, it made sense that when the team returned to competition in 2021, not everything would run smoothly, including Sayen’s nationals race.

When his 2021-22 school year ended, Sayen was finished with his undergraduate degree, and had to make a decision about whether he wanted to give cross country one more chance, thanks to the NCAA awarding athletes who were on roster during the pandemic one more season to compete, if they wanted it. Once he made up his mind to compete, the next decision was whether or not to enter the transfer portal.

After he began considering other schools, he decided to return to Michigan Tech for his fifth season, mainly thanks to a memorable road trip experience with some of his teammates.

“The culture of the team I was on, I didn’t want to give up,” he said. “We went on to a (track) meet. We raced unattached, in February, down at Grand Valley. We just drove ourselves down, and the coaches didn’t come, because it wasn’t associated with the NCAA. I had the time of my life. It’s like my favorite track meet trip I’ve ever had.

“I wasn’t ready to give up this group of guys. I couldn’t, I couldn’t do that, knowing what I’d be leaving behind.”

Starting a master’s degree in business administration, Sayen returned for a fifth year, which gave him one more chance at an All-American finish.

This season, he placed 11th at the Midwest Region Cross Country Championships on Nov. 19 to qualify for the nationals. He placed fifth at the GLIAC Championships 15 days before regionals. He placed sixth at the Lewis Crossover in October, and he took second at the Roy Griak Invitational in late September and also in the Vic Godfrey Open 21 days prior to that.

As he prepared for his final cross country race, Sayen admitted he felt his nerves kick in.

“I was still a little nervous,” he said. “With it being my last race, and my last shot at it, I was a little skeptical. My goal to start the season was to be basically the best runner in Michigan Tech school history, at least in the cross country level. To do that, I had to place higher than 21st.

“Preseason, that was an attainable goal, but then, throughout the season, I was just dealing with little injuries, just here and there, that made it less than ideal for me.”

The injuries did not deter Sayen from competing. Even with the 11th place finish at regionals, which he felt was not a great finish for him, he still believed that things would fall for him when he really needed them to.

“(It) wasn’t the greatest confidence boost I had going into the meet, which led me to kind of just throw my old goal out the window,” he said. “(I) just want to be in the Top 40, and we’ll do what I can to do there. I didn’t know where I would be with respect to the rest of the field. So I was a little nervous, and kind of a little doubting where I was at.”

On race day, Sayen got off to a great start, getting ahead of Kolodge, whom he often chased this season, early. From there, he did not look back. However, while he was working to move up in the race a couple of spots at a time, he was not really certain where he was in relation to the field.

“Off the start, I was in the Top 30 from the initial split, (which) was at little over a kilometer in, and I think I was 29th,” said Sayen. “Initially, I thought I went out too hard, and that the field was going to swallow me up from behind. But, I didn’t panic, I just kind of stayed with it, and was just going to roll with the punches, but it never did.

“Almost every time we ran over a split mat, which I think there were seven or eight of them, I moved up a couple spots each time.”

At around the 8k mark, Sayen could hear one of the coaches counting out placements, which helped him realize he was in 20th, and that a school record was in reach if he pushed himself through the fatigue. He did lose one spot in the final stretch to another runner who found another gear late in the race, but he still finished 16th.

He was not aware of what his actual placement was until he found his family after the finish line.

“I didn’t know what place I was until my finish, until I saw my mom, my girlfriend and my dad, because they all flew out, and they told me I was 16,” he said. “I didn’t know how to react. It was just like a flood of positive emotions that I didn’t know I had.”

Sayen fully admits that he could not have finished as high as he did without Kolodge there to push him to better himself in practices and races throughout the season.

“I can talk about that all day,” he said. “Having somebody that you train with every day, and do workouts with, and share the same goal with in a race with you, I can’t describe how thankful I am for that.”

Being able to accomplish the school records at home means the world to Sayen.

“I’ve noticed that the support is unreal,” he said. “After my race a couple of weeks ago, I have just been running into people that I haven’t talked to in years, or even since like high school maybe, and they told me that they watched the race and they were so happy that I placed where I did. That’s awesome.

“I didn’t even know that people still really followed or even cared like where I was, but I was very wrong. The community support, it’s humbling to know that people that I’m not even really close with have an interest in my success.”