With a four-point margin of victory, Christian Brothers Academy became the first New Jersey team to claim a national championship with 91 points. Carroll finished with 95 points, earning the third podium finish for Texas in NXN history. Davis (Utah) claimed the first Utah podium spot by taking third place with 157 points. The girls' race also proved to be quick compared to the previous year, with Sarah Baxter (California) claiming the girls' championship in 17:38, a full forty seconds faster than 2010, which saw no runners break 18 minutes. After Baxter, it was all New York. New York continued their stranglehold atop the podium for girls' teams. For the first seven years of NXN, a New York girls' team had claimed the championship. Furthermore, in four of those years (2005, 2006, 2009, and 2010), a New York team also claimed runner-up status to the champion. The same storyline occurred yet again in 2011. However, unlike 2010, there would not be complete and total domination by Fayetteville–Manlius en route to the championship, as Saratoga would give Fayetteville–Manlius their toughest fight yet for the win. After scoring a mere 27 points in 2010 and winning by 77 points over Saratoga, Fayetteville–Manlius scored 60 points (still the second-lowest of their championship scores) and won by "just" 24 points for their sixth consecutive national championship. For the third year in a row, with 84 points, Saratoga was relegated to bridesmaid status to Fayetteville–Manlius, which also marked the fifth time in eight years that New York had gone 1–2 in the team standings in the national championship. Nearly one hundred points behind the two New York superpowers was a tie between Tatnall (Delaware) and New Trier (Illinois). Tatnall won the third place trophy on the sixth-runner tiebreaker, giving the school their second podium finish in their history. The ninth annual edition of the Nike Cross Nationals was held on December 1, 2012, once again at Portland Meadows, Oregon. In 2012, the universal word out of Portland Meadows on the conditions was "MUDDY!" Indeed, the girls' race would turn out to be one of the slowest races in NXN history, as defending champion Sarah Baxter of Simi Valley would repeat her title in 19:17, a time that was more than a minute-and-a-half slower than her 2011 time of 17:38.