Washington to debut new threads at the NCAA Championships...

Thanks to head coach Greg Metcalf and equipment manager Gary McGuire, paulmerca.blogspot.com was granted a sneak peek at the new uniforms the Washington men's and women's cross country teams will wear beginning with the NCAA Cross Country Championships on Monday in Terre Haute, Indiana.

As they have for the past several seasons, the uniforms were designed by Nike, Inc. This will be the look that the men's and women's track teams will have, beginning with the Husky Indoor Preview meet on January 17th (according to McGuire, they will stay with the current uniforms for the Husky Winter Preview on December 6th).

The women's jersey is on the top, and the men's jersey is on the bottom. You'll notice that like many of Nike's tops for elite women athletes, it has a racer-back look to give female athletes more freedom of movement in the shoulder area.

If this design looks suspiciously familiar, the theme of the Huskies' new uniforms are similar to the ones designed for several national teams at the Olympics in Beijing, and Nike's contracted elite track and field athletes, utilizing the Swift technology that garnered numerous medals.

Here's the link to the story paulmerca.blogspot.com wrote in April on the new national federation uniforms debuted at the Nike Beijing Summit...

Like the national teams of Germany, Kenya, Russia, China, the United States, and Estonia, the Huskies will have choices including a sprint unitard, a classic singlet and shorts set, half tights, and for women, racing briefs and "boy cut" shorts.

PS: This is the 500th post since paulmerca.blogspot.com made its debut on March 1, 2007--thank you to everyone who's helped make it possible, including all of the readers out there.