INSIDE
MEN'S CROSS COUNTRY
BY AJ HARRISON
@BADGER_TRACK
SCHEDULE
COMING UP
Saturday NCAA
Championship
42 and counting: Badgers
return to national stage
No. 17 UW runs at NCAA championship Saturday
or the 42nd straight season, the Wisconsin men's
cross country team will
run in the NCAA championship. The Badgers punched
their ticket last Friday with
a second-place finish at the
NCAA Great Lakes Regional
at the Zimmer Championship
Course.
With the finish, UW is the
only team in the country that
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VARSITY November 21, 2013
has qualified for every national meet since the regional
qualifying system was implemented in 1972.
"Making it for the 42nd consecutive year, that's very exciting," Wisconsin director of
track & field and cross country
Mick Byrne said. "It just speaks
again to the tradition that we
have here at the University of
Wisconsin."
11 a.m.
After a third-place finish at the Big Ten
championship two weeks prior, Wisconsin had one of its best showings of the
year at the regional meet. Byrne still believes the team has room to improve Saturday in Terre Haute, Ind.
"There's certainly room for improvement," Byrne said. "We thought that we
were in there with a shot to win. When
you look at the point spread between
four teams, I don't think that's happened
at any other region around the country."
Wisconsin looks for its 18th-straight
top-10 finish at the NCAA championship
on Saturday in the 10-kilometer race at
11 a.m. With an eight-day turnaround
between races, Byrne says one of the
keys for the team is to simply recover
from the regional meet.
"As far as we're concerned, the big
thing for us this week is to recover," Byrne said. "The guys seemed to have done
a good job with that. It's just getting mentally and physically prepared for what's
coming down the road here."
No stranger to the NCAA championship, Wisconsin has excelled at the national meet in recent history. Reaching
the podium four of the past five seasons,
including three straight top-three finishes.
"You're preparing for the fact that
you're running against 30 of the best
teams in the country, the best athletes in
the country," Byrne said.
"At the national championships, anything can happen."
