Notes on this weekend's race from NNU coach Ben Gall...
The NNU men's and women's cross country teams head to Seattle this weekend to take on five different GNAC teams as well as many other schools.
The squads look to perform well in their first healthy meet. Last weekend at the Roger Curran Invitational in Nampa both teams raced to third place finishes running short handed. The men were missing two of their top runners in
Matt Stark (So.) and
Seth Clark (Jr.) while the women were missing
Elisa Decker (Jr.), one of their top runners. All of them were sick with the flu and had to miss the meet. This week everyone is healthy and looking forward to a good showing in Seattle.
On the guys side the Crusaders will face three GNAC teams ranked in the top ten in the D2 West region; Western Washington (2nd), Alaska Anchorage (3rd) and St. Martin's (9th) as well as Seattle Pacific and Central Washington, also of the GNAC. NNU led by freshman Barak Watson and sophomore Matt Stark look to compete well with the top teams in the region and hopefully garner enough attention to move in to the top ten ranked teams in the region.
On the women's side the Crusaders enter the weekend ranked 9th in the region and also face three regionally ranked opponents from the GNAC. Seattle Pacific leads the way as the number one ranked team in the region, followed by Alaska Anchorage at 3rd and Western Washington at 4th. NNU is led by returning all conference performer, junior Jaclyn Puga and freshman standout Jordan Powell. With the return of Elisa Decker and the health of the entire squad NNU is looking to compete well with the top teams in the region and hopefully continue their climb in the rankings.
Both teams are hoping for a top five team finish in Seattle at a meet that will have more than twenty scoring teams. The meet is held at Lincoln Park in West Seattle and is hosted by the University of Washington. The NNU women start the day off at 9 a.m. in the open race followed at 9:40 by the men also in the open race.
