NCAA Nationals are Monday - Div 11 Today - What the Colleges are saying on their websites

Florida State
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The Florida State cross country teams (Men- No. 20/ Women-No. 8) will take the course Monday, November 23, for their final stint of the 2009 season at the NCAA Championships in Terre Haute, Ind. The Lavern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course will welcome the nation’s elite teams including Oregon (Men- No. 8/Women- No. 4), Washington (Men- No. 15/Women- No. 1), Colorado (Men and Women- No. 6) and Syracuse (Men- No. 9/ Women- No. 12).

“The first big relief is over,” FSU men’s head coach Bob Braman said. “We knew we had a top 20 type team. We probably made qualifying a little bit more difficult than it had to be. We really put it all on the line that day and they responded but now moving forward we are a little tired from the race. However, we have said all year long the reason we are so back loaded is because it’s two races over nine days of that difficult of a magnitude.”

The Seminole men will kick off the 10k championship at 12 p.m. with captains Matt Leeder and Daniel Roberts slated to pace the squad. Newcomers Ciaran O’Lionard and Wes Rickman alongside Justin Harbor are also expected to score for FSU.

“We have to go in there and compete hard like last time,” Coach Braman said. “A top 20 finish is very realistic because we are ranked 20th. We have done that three of the six last times so maybe this is the tiebreaker whether we are a historical top 20 team. We would need a special day in order to take a top 15 and top 10 spot, but we have trained for it so the possibility is there.”

Roberts led the Garnet and Gold in the 2008 championship with a 66th place finish while Leeder came in 89th place to help the men score 576 points to take 26th place.

McNeese State
McNeese State’s Joshua Sawe and David Rooney will compete in the NCAA cross country championship race in Terre Haute, IN on Monday.

The men’s race will begin at 11:08 a.m. central time at the Wabash Valley Family Sports Center in Terre Haute. The women’s race will follow at 11:58 a.m.

Both championship races will be telecast live over Versus Network and will also be streamed online via NCAA.com.

Sawe and Rooney are two of only three Southland Conference runners who qualified for the meet. The other is Francis Kasagule of Lamar.

Sawe earned his berth in the meet with a fifth place finish in the south central regional while Rooney gained his with an eighth place finish.

This is the first time since the late 1970s that McNeese has had an athlete qualify for the NCAA cross country finals. Back then David Kohrs and Pat O’Callaghan made it to the finals.

Providence College
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - The U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association announced today the 2009 Division I Men’s and Women’s All-Region Cross Country teams. The Providence College women’s squad landed four runners on the Northeast Region Team while the men had three runners earn All-Northeast honors.

The women, who placed second in the Northeast Regionals out of 35 teams, had three runners finish in the top-10 individually. Freshman Shelby Greany (Suffern, N.Y.) placed second (22:08), sophomore Hannah Davidson (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.) finished fifth overall (22:15) and senior Breffini Twohig (Dublin, Ireland) placed 10th overall (22:31) to earn All-Northeast honors. Junior Emma Perron (West Hartford, Conn.) placed 20th (22:51) and was PC’s final selection on the All-Northeast Region Team.

The men finished third overall in the 36-team field. Sophomores Lee Carey (Bedworth, England) and Dominic Channon (Nelson, New Zealand) joined junior David McCarthy (Waterford, Ireland) on the All-Northeast Region Team. Carey finished second-overall in a time of 30:46. McCarthy finished fourth in 31:07, while Channon placed 16th in a time of 31:32.

Both teams will compete in the NCAA Championship in Terre Haute, Ind. on Monday, November 23. The men’s race is set for 12:08 p.m. while the women’s race has a tentative women’s start time of 12:58 p.m.

Western State
GUNNISON, Colo. – The chance to add more gold-plated hardware to the trophy cases in Paul Wright Gym await the Western State men’s and women’s cross country teams at the 2009 NCAA Division II National Championships Saturday in Evansville, Ind. Both teams depart from Denver Thursday morning and inspect the course Friday before the women start the championships at 11 a.m. MST. The men’s race starts at 12 p.m. MST.

All four of the men’s All-Americans from last season – Iain Donnan, Tyler Pennel, Loren Ahonen and Sean Brown – will look to collect more All-America titles this season.David Flynn a native from Ireland who has made an impact almost instantly for the Western State team will also be looking for All American Honours also with the European Cross country being in Dublin (His home town) he will be seeking pre selection for the Irish team.Flynn has just come off All Region Status at the Central Regionals 2 weeks ago and is hoping to build on current form. Donnan will be going for his second national team title in additional to his 2005 title in his freshman season.

The last time the national championships were held in Evansville, Ind., in 2004, the men won the national title. It was part of six national championships in a seven-year span for the Mountaineer men’s teams from 1999-2005. A win Saturday would be national title No. 9 for the Western State men.

The women’s team enters as the seventh-ranked team in Division II, an improvement of seven positions compared to five weeks ago. The Mountaineers have never finished lower than eighth at the national championships, since available records dating back to 1986, and have finished on the podium in 17 of the last 18 seasons.

Sarah Lyle, Hillory Davis and Cassandra Ortiz were the all-region performers for Western State two weeks ago and can be expected to lead the women’s team this weekend. All seven women runners improved their six-kilometer times at the regional meet compared to the RMAC Championships two weeks earlier.

For race updates Saturday, make sure to follow the Mountaineer twitter page at twitter.com/WSCMountaineers.

Mick Byrne Interview - Big 10 Coach of the Year
http://www.uwbadgers.com/sports/m-xc/spec-rel/111709aaa.html

Tralee Racecourse