The Cal Poly men’s cross country team will travel to Terre Haute, Ind. for the third straight year for the NCAA Championships after receiving an at-large bid Sunday.
“We’re relieved and excited to get to go back,” said Mustangs head coach Mark Conover, who has taken the team to the national meet six out of the last nine years.
The Mustangs finished seventh at the West Regional on Saturday and had strong enough finishes at the Bill Dellinger Invitational and the Pre-National Invitational earlier this season to be awarded a wild-card spot in the national meet, which begins at 7 a.m. Monday.
Cal Poly was one of only 13 teams to get an at-large bid.
“(Getting to nationals is) obviously our goal before the season starts, and we felt that with the returning members of the team and the addition of Daniel Gonia, the top J.C. transfer, we had a good shot at it,” Conover said.
Gonia placed ninth with a time of 29 minutes, 12.39 seconds at the West Regional meet at the 10K Stanford Golf Course. He was the top finisher for the Mustangs, followed by Evan Anderson in 25th (29:49.10), Troy Swier in 43rd (30:25.37), Andy Wright in 52nd (30:39.53) and Joe Gatel in 55th (30:44.37).
“As with every year, the western region is a very tough region, so things had to right throughout the year for us to make the return appearance,” Conover said. “We had to go and compete and hold our own, and we accomplished that.”
Cal Poly was ranked 19th nationally heading into the West Regional, and Conover said the team’s goal was to try to surpass its ranking and get another top-15 finish. The Mustangs finished 11th last year.
“Anything can happen,” Conover said. “That’s the beauty of the national championships. There’s so much on the line and having that (previous) meet experience will help a lot.”
– Alisha Axsom