This sunday, both the men’s and women’s cross-country teams will travel to Terre Haute for the Nike Cross Country Midwest Regionals. The top seven runners from both teams will compete in Sunday’s meet, battling cross-country clubs from all across Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Missouri. The top two men’s and women’s teams, in additio
n to the top five runners in both races, will advance to the Nike Cross Country National Competition on Dec. 5 in Portland, OR.

If the teams move forward after the regional competition, it will be the women’s sixth consecutive year competing in the national competition and the men’s fourth.

According to Megan Kress, varsity cross-country runner and senior, the girl’s team is eager to return to nationals. Kress said,“Once you’ve experienced something, it makes you want to work hard to get there again, and I also think having the experience from last year will help us again this year, just knowing what’s going on and being in the rhythm once we’re there.”

Colin Altevogt, head coach of the men’s team, said both teams are excited by the prospect of another year at Nationals and will continue practicing hard up until their last me


et. While many teams severely cut down their running toward the end of the season, Altevogt said this may do more harm than good.
Altevogt said, “I think it’s important at this point in the season not to cut back too much, I think that’s a mistake that teams make, is they run hard all year, and they’re capable of something and the last couple weeks they think they’re going to rest up and be better but they’re actually worse because they rest too much. So, I think it’s important to keep training hard, and then just pull back a little bit right befor
e the last meet.”

However, as the teams continue their training, according to Ben
Veatch, varsity cross-country runner and senior, the fear of injury looms over the teams. With two of the men’s top runners out with injuries, Veatch said that the team will have to work even harder to make it to Nationals.“We’ve got a really tough Regional; there’s a lot of great teams from around the nation. Really there’s four teams from the top 2 in the nation in the Midwest, but if we do make it (to Nationals), it’ll be great building blocks for our team and we’ll just go out there and compete,” Veatch said.