Texas beat Texas A&M on the football field last November. By the following May, though, the Aggies had claimed their third Lone Star Showdown trophy. The competition spans across all sports, with the winner of each competition earning points towards their Showdown total. The team with the most points at the end of the academic year takes home the hardware.
Even though the Longhorns’ 27-17 win at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium was major, it was still worth just one point in the 2025-26 Lone Star Showdown. Texas A&M brought the trophy home to College Station after an 11.5-point campaign, thanks in large part to a six-point sweep across both men’s and women’s cross country and indoor and outdoor track and field.
The 2026-27 Lone Star Showdown kicks off Friday at the Southeastern Conference Cross Country Championships in Columbia, Missouri, with the first points of this year’s rivalry up for grabs. Texas knows just how costly losing those early points can be after the Aggies’ sweep on the track and the course last year.
In the 2024 season, Texas won the first renewed Showdown after sweeping the Aggies in cross country. At that year’s SEC Championships, senior Eva Jess ran a personal-best 19.38.1 in the women’s 6-kilometer race, finishing 12th and helping lead the Longhorns to fifth place. A&M finished 10th.
The next year wasn’t nearly as favorable for the Longhorns.
During the 2025 SEC Championships, Texas senior Elizabeth Pickett finished 14th, ahead of Texas A&M’s then-sophomore Joyce Kemboi and then-freshman Debora Cherono in 16th and 17th. But the Aggies placed sixth as a team, seven spots above Texas.
The Aggies built on their cross country wins with four more Showdown points being earned during the indoor and outdoor track seasons.
The rivalry has played out far differently on the football field, however, where the Longhorns have defeated the Aggies by double digits in both matchups since the two programs reunited in the SEC.
“We don’t like Texas. I don’t like Texas,” Texas A&M senior quarterback Marcel Reed told USA Today.
On the football field, the Longhorns have given Reed plenty of reasons to feel that way. On the cross country course, however, it’s Texas that has been left chasing the Aggies.
Football may draw the biggest crowds of any Lone Star Showdown matchup, but Texas learned last year that the rivalry isn’t decided solely on the gridiron.
Friday’s meet offers Texas a chance to assert dominance on the cross-country course. Recent form, however, favors Texas A&M. At the Arturo Barrios Invitational in College Station on Oct. 16th, the Aggie women finished seventh of 46 teams. Texas placed 20th, with senior Aishling Callanan running a personal-best time of 20:45.7, placing her 67th. Callanan has led Texas in the 6-kilometer race four of its five meets this season.
Texas A&M’s Cherono finished the race 22nd in 19:56.8, and freshman Laney Barnes followed in 25th. Barnes earned SEC Women’s Freshman of the Week honors in September. As it stands, the Aggies rank fifth in the South Central Region rankings, six places over the Longhorns.
Texas A&M distance coach Wendel McRaven described Friday’s championships as “an opportunity to showcase all the hard work and dedication the team has put in throughout the season,” in a press release.
Last year’s cross country results helped put Texas in a hole it never climbed out of in the rivalry standings. Friday, the Longhorns have a chance to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself.
