The DePauw men's cross country team is headed to Hanover College this Saturday, Oct. 5 to race in the NCAA Division III Pre-Nationals meet.
More than 20 teams from across the United States are committed to participate in the meet. The run will take place at the L.S. Ayres Athletic Complex in Hanover, Ind. at 1 p.m.. Five ranked men's teams will compete, including No. 6 Bowdoin College (ME), No. 9 Trinity College, No. 12 Wabash College, No. 22 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and No. 26 Manchester University.
Co-captain of the team Stu Newstat, a senior from Western Springs, Ill. said, "Matching up against regional ranked teams, seeing how teams are doing, we are motivated to see where we are after the past few weeks of hard practice. It'll be good to make the gap smaller against some of those teams."
Five ranked men's teams will compete in the pre-national meet, including Wabash. This weekend, Newstat intends to "make the gap a lot smaller and get closer to Wabash."
"We also want to beat teams that we know we are capable of beating," Newstat said.
DePauw's last two meets were the Calvin Knight Invitational in Grand Rapids, Mich. and the Little State portion of the Indiana Intercollegiates in Bloomington, Ind.. At the Calvin Knight Invitational, DePauw men earned a total of 327 points and finished ninth among the 27 schools at the meet. And at the Little State Portion of Indiana Intercollegiates paced by sophomore Paul Watts' 21st-place showing, DePauw received a total of 176 points earning them sixth place.
"We are in a good spot," Newstat said. "Our last race wasn't as great as we wanted. If we race how we practice it'll be scary."
But in the past couple of weeks since their last meet, the team has been working hard, pushing each other to the best of their abilities.
"After Intercollegiate, we knew we would have time and we are a team that races better in the later half of the season," Watts, a sophomore transfer from Granger, Ind., said. "While it was disappointing, it definitely was a good starting point."
The NCAA Division III pre-nationals meet this weekend will be a good test to see just how far the DePauw men's cross country team has come.
Both Newstat and Watts believe in their team and believe that as a team they have come far in these last few weeks of training.
"Everyone's here to work hard compared to the team I was on [before transferring to DePauw]. You can tell everyone wants to succeed which is something I haven't had before," Watts said. "We want a breakout race this weekend. The shape we are in now is head and shoulders above what it was at Intercollegiate. We need to go out and prove what we've been proving to ourselves everyday."