All five Washington D1 schools set to run at NCAA West Regionals in Sacramento Friday...
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| Members of Gonzaga's men's team finish their course inspection by doing strides (Paul Merca photo) |
SACRAMENTO—All five of Washington’s Division I schools--Eastern Washington, Gonzaga, SeattleU, Washington, and Washington State--were on the Haggin Oaks Golf Course Thursday morning taking a spin around the course used for Friday morning’s NCAA West Regional cross country championships.
The top two teams from each of the nine regional meets contested around the country Friday will earn automatic bids into next week’s NCAA championship meet in Charlottesville, Virginia, with the rest of the field filled by at large entries decided by the NCAA committee based on, among other factors, strength of schedule.
The announcement of the at-large entries into the national championship meet happens Saturday at 2pm Pacific on ncaa.com.
Both the Washington and Gonzaga men, as well as the Gonzaga women will have to have strong showings Friday if they are to advance to nationals.
Washington is on a bit of an upswing after a strong second place finish at the Pac-12 championships two weeks ago, after adding both Nathan Green and Joe Waskom to their lineups after sitting them out of the first two meets.
While Gonzaga won its first West Coast Conference men’s championship, they were missing Kyle Radosevich from last year's team that ran at the conference, regional & NCAA championships. He won't run Friday.
In the men's race, this marks the first time this season that most teams will race 10k instead of the 8k (or less) that they've run during the regular season, which could possibly be a factor for several teams, including Washington, which has the last three outdoor 1500/mile champions in Waskom, Luke Houser & Green. In the case of Green, he's running the first 10k cross country meet of his UW career.
Both men's squads must realistically get past Cal Baptist, Stanford, Oregon, Boise State and/or stay close to both Cal Baptist and Stanford to have a chance to advance to nationals.
The Gonzaga women, who were slight favorites at the WCC, were beaten by Portland, and will have to get past Washington, Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State, Cal Baptist and Portland if they want a realistic shot of going to nationals. WCC champ Rosina Machu will spearhead the Zags.
Pac-12 champion Washington will have no changes from the team which ran two weeks ago in University Place, with Sophie O'Sullivan and Chloe Foerster leading the charge.
Unlike the conference meets, where the teams ran up to ten runners, the teams will comprise of seven athletes.
Action gets underway at 10 am with the women's 6k, then followed an hour later with the men's 10k.
NOTE: The NCAA, and the sports information offices of Sacramento State, Eastern Washington, Gonzaga, SeattleU, Washington, and Washington State contributed to this report.
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