Inherent within all successful collegiate cross country teams is a tight bond, a cohesion of purpose and effort, and NAU’s women’s team this season certainly has exhibited such traits heading into Saturday’s NCAA Nationals in Madison, Wisc.
Cliched though it may be, the team has become a family.
And within that familial tie that has seen the Lumberjacks ascend to No. 3 in the rankings, and pose a threat to derail BYU’s inside track to the title, there is a true family bond at NAU this year: the Moore sisters.
Sisters Nikita and Keira, teenage standouts in Brisbane, Australia, have brought their talents and irrepressible Aussie spirit half a world away to help NAU in its quest for its first women’s NCAA crown in what is coach Mike Smith’s final season.
Though they may not appear near the top of the leaderboard in races, such as teammates Elise Stearns and Ali Upshaw, junior Nikita and sophomore Keira have bolstered a deep and talented Lumberjack squad all season.
The two almost seem to tradeoff which outperforms the other, with Nikita being NAU’s third runner at the Joe Paine Notre Dame Invitational, Keira third runner and Nikita fourth at Pre-Nationals in Wisconsin and, last week, in the NCAA Mountain Regionals, Keira finishing as NAU’s fourth (17th overall) and Nikita sixth (26th overall).
No matter the outcome on Saturday, the Moores already have made quite an impression on the team, and vice versa.
Nikita and Keira were stars in their home country, winning numerous secondary school titles in Queensland and were considered two of the top U-20 runners in the land. As such, like most top Australian runners (think Jessica Hull and Ollie Hoare), they were sought-after by U.S. colleges.
That should be no surprise, given their lineage. The sisters’ mother, Lizel Moore, was an Olympic triathlete representing South Africa, placing 30th in the 2000 Games in Sydney. She also coached Keira and Nikita, and the family’s two younger sisters, Erica and Zara, in addition to running her own elite triathlon coaching program.
But when it came time for Nikita, the oldest, to decide on which U.S. college to pick, it was her choice alone. She said she chose NAU not only for its championship pedigree on the men’s side and ascension on the women’s side, but because of the coaching of Smith and the milieu of Flagstaff.
“I was pretty young when I realized I wanted to go to America,” Nikita said. “We had some older athletes here (in Brisbane) who went to different colleges (in the U.S.) and they loved the experience. Even away from the running side, it was just a great opportunity. I reached out starting in about grade 11 and grade 10 and cut it down and decided my senior year. It would’ve been great for us to go to separate schools, but there was nothing better than NAU for us. It’s the team culture, how we train and where we live. It’s a privilege.”
The sisters describe each other as close, but not exactly joined at the hip. They each value their independence.
That’s why, initially, Keira crossed NAU off her list. She wanted, perhaps, to escape her older sister’s shadow – even though Keira is the taller of the two. She seriously considers the University of Florida and Oklahoma State before being won over.
“The main reason I was looking at Florida is that we knew a girl who we trained with who was like a big sister to us, and she went there (to Florida),” Keira said. “At the start of my recruiting journey, I wanted to go anywhere but where Nikita was. I was like, ‘Ugh, we’ve been to the same high school, trained together, we have the same friends. I want to do something different.’
“But after all the recruiting calls and meeting other teams, I couldn’t pass up going to NAU, everything from the coaching staff, the team and Flagstaff. Nothing was going to beat it.”
“At the start of my recruiting journey, I wanted to go anywhere but where Nikita was. I was like, ‘Ugh, we’ve been to the same high school, trained together, we have the same friends. I want to do something different.’”
Keira Moore
Once in Flagstaff, the Moores had to adjust to a new country, new culture, new way of training – not to mention the high altitude and mountains, given that Brisbane is near sea level abutting the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean.
They took to it well. In a little more than two years here, the Moores have cemented their spots on the cross-county team and have shown promise on the track. (Nitika broke 16 minutes twice in the 5,000 meters last spring, and Keira qualified for the NCAA West Regionals in the 1,500).
There was no thought, they said, of remaining in Australia for college. Not if they wanted to run. The Moores said the country does not have the equivalent of the NCAA for post-secondary school runners.
“A lot of us tend to come over to American because for a lot of us there’s not a lot of opportunity after high school unless you’re (immediately) becoming a professional runner,” Keira explained. “In America, there’s that college level, which is such a good opportunity to compete at a fairly high level while getting an education as well.”
Nikita tried to explain why Australia, a country with a rich history in track and field, doesn’t have organized teams and conferences at their universities. (As with many countries, even the high school runners belong to club teams.)
“I believe there might be more of a focus on academics (in Australia),” she said. “Also, the sporting culture just isn’t as big. Yeah, there’s high school sport but, in America, I guess people are more into the idea of potentially it being a career. There’s also less money put into the sport at home, as well.
“Sport in general has a bigger fan base here (in the U.S.). There’s more hype here around sport in general. We have nothing in comparison to (NCAA) nationals. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it’s just due to the size of the country, maybe, or lack of resources.”
The sisters, however, did not lack for resources in their own running journey. In addition to their Olympian mother, the Moores’ father, Louie, was a sprinter.
They grew up around the sport, but are quick to add that their parents never pressed them to compete. Turns out, they didn’t have to.
“She was a great athlete,” Nikita said of her mother, “but she never really talked about it that much. She was actually our coach growing up. She had her own triathlon group that she coached, and a running group, and just being her daughters, we’d come down to the training sessions and just hang out with the older people.
“As we started getting older, we just joined in on the running sessions. I’d definitely say there was a push to be athletic, but she never pushed us to be on the pro level. The biggest thing for them was just that we had a passion for something.”
Despite their mother’s career as a professional triathlete, and later coach, none of the Moore siblings took up triathlon.
“I think I’m the only one who could swim,” Keira said, laughing. “It’s what I spend a lot of time doing when I cross-train. Maybe in the future, it’d be something I might like to try to do. As kids, we did do a couple of aquathlons. We dabbled in it, but running was always more enjoyable to us.
“Same with other sports. Our mom didn’t want us to be some great athlete, just do something to keep us motivated and active, learn work ethic. We did gymnastics, soccer. But we just naturally were better at and enjoyed running, and that’s where it took us.”
As for sibling rivalry, there isn’t any. Not now, at least. Both Moores have signed NILs with an Australian sportswear company, IMPI, and have done photo shoots and made social media pitches. But when they were younger …
“It was probably between all four of us,” Nikita said of the Moore kids. “I even remember being competitive with my littlest sister.
“It helps that there isn’t one of us (she and Keira) that’s really better than the other. We’re always kind of taking turns. We’ve beaten each other. When you’re young, there’s that competitiveness, but you kind of grow out of it.”
Keira and Nikita have leaned on each other to keep any possibility of homesickness at bay. They share many of the same friends in Flagstaff – big shock: most are teammates – and share many of the same views of the culture differences between Australia and the U.S.
Nikita: “The biggest thing for me between Australia and American culture is the lifestyle. In Flagstaff, it’s hard to see the difference; it’s great. But in other places in America, it’s just a lot busier, a rushed lifestyle. Like, work first, play second, that kind of attitude. But in Australia, yeah, we get work done, but there’s more emphasis on play and balance. There’s more, like, socialization, if you know what I mean. But the great thing about living in Flagstaff is, you get the culture and experience of America but not on an extreme level. There are outdoorsy people here, so we already had something to relate to.”
Keira: “Flagstaff is such a great fit because it’s kind of an in-between what Australian culture is like and what it might be like living in, like, L.A. or Texas or something, where it’d be a big culture shock. This place has a nice balance, where we don’t feel too away from home. But we came to another country to experience something different. We didn’t come for the same old thing.”
They also came to get an education and see how far running may take them. Nikita is a communications major with a sociology minor; Keira a nutrition major.
Should they continue their upward trajectory in running at NAU – Nikita has two years left, Keira three — the Moores aren’t ruling out post-collegiate opportunities to run.
“Of course, if the opportunity was to come up, I’d take it, even if it just was for a couple of years,” Nikita said about pro running. “It doesn’t need to be a lifetime thing. But it’s hard to tell right now. I don’t want it to be my only goal in life. I’ve been running competitively since I was 10 years old, so it’d be really cool to step away from it at some point.”
Right now, though, Nikita and Keira are leaning into the NCAA championship meet on Saturday. They acknowledge that BYU is the favorite, but they also don’t count NAU out.
“We’ve all seen the talk of BYU versus NAU, but I think honestly, we’re both great teams and we’ll both race as hard as can on the day,” Keira said. “We have a lot of respect for them as a team. They have great athletes and have been running consistently this season. Rather than focusing on what we can do to beat them, we focus on what we can do individually and as a team to put ourselves in a position to compete.”
Regardless of where NAU finishes on Saturday, on or off the podium, the Moores say their time at NAU has been special, helping to make a promising women’s program into a potentially championship one.
“That’s a really special part of our story here,” Nikita said. “I came to NAU when we were still growing as a team. We had great talent, but we hadn’t seen the results yet. We just needed people to believe in the program. It’s been great to be a part of it. Seeing how good the (women’s) program is now and the kind of recruits we can get, a couple of years ago, we never would’ve dreamed of that.”
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