While DePauw alumni and students celebrate Monon Bell weekend by tailgating and watching senior quarterback Will King pass the pigskin, the men's and women's cross-country teams will be trying to qualify for the NCAA Div. III championships.
The top two teams in the region go directly to the Div. III championship meet. The rest of the top five have a possible at-large bid to the meet. In terms of individuals, the top seven runners who are not on the teams with bids going in to the tournament will also go the championship meet.
The meet will be hosted by Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. On Oct. 15, both teams competed in the Oberlin Inter-Regional Rumble where the women's team placed third out of 33 teams while the men placed 11th of 34. After another month of training, head coach Kori Stoffregen is optimistic that both his teams can run better on the course they ran on a month ago.
"This is their chance to step up and shine," Stoffregen said. "Our goal going in to this is we want to be a really solid team. I want each runner to have better times than they did a month ago. I want all seven runners on each team to leave feeling like we've all had a good meet."
Neither team is slated in the top 10 of the regional rankings. With that in mind, the Tiger runners come in to the meet with an uphill battle ahead of them to qualify a single runner.
"It's definitely an underdog situation," Stoffregen said. "We have nothing to lose which is less pressure. So we're telling them that this might be the last meet of the year and all the work you've done all summer and all fall, this is where it pays off."
Both teams have battled injury all season long, resulting in a fifth place finish for the men's team in the NCAC championship meet and a third place finish for the women. For the men, the biggest injury has been to senior Pete Richard, who would have strengthened the team alongside junior Noah Droddy.
"This isn't the healthiest team we've ever had," Stoffregen said. "It seems like the women's team has overcome that a little bit better than the men's team. But the guys with Pete Richard out, that really hurts us."
Regardless of the injuries and the obvious underdog scenario, the Tigers are hoping to qualify for the NCAA championships on a course which they are familiar with.