It's time for the Ohio women's cross country team to hit the road once again for the NCAA Pre-National meet Saturday in Terre Haute, Ind.
This is the largest meet the Bobcats have competed in so far this season. There will be 85 women's teams running in one of three divisions -blue, white and open. Ohio will run in the open race.
No. 1 Stanford and No. 3 Michigan will be among half of the nation's top 30 ranked teams competing this weekend.
The Bobcats are coming off a 13th-place team finish at the All-Ohio Championships last weekend. Freshman Carime Reinhart led Ohio with a third-place finish in 18:26 for the 5,000-meter (3.1-mile) course.
Reinhart, who was named Mid-American Conference Runner of the Week, said she hopes to run another good race this weekend and continue preparing for the MAC Championships in two weeks.
I'm pretty pumped about MAC Championships
so hopefully I can do well and then at MAC's have an even better race she said.
Coach Clay Calkins said the team is looking good this year.
We're looking better than we did last year he said. We just want to keep improving and gear up for the MAC Championships.
Andrea Maas, who ran on the same course at last year's NCAA Great Lakes Regional, said she hopes that having run on this course before will benefit her this weekend.
I've ran this course before
so I know what to expect
she said. I am going to try to run like I did last year.
Joining Maas and Reinhart are Lauren Birnie, Kendra Churchill, Ali Green, Ashley Kirk, Stephanie Knous, Alicia Myers and Katelyn Reepmeyer.
The race this weekend will be a 6K race, rather than the 5K distance at which the runners have competed all year.
Calkins said it will be good preparation for the women to run a longer race, since it is the same distance as Regionals.
MAC schools Kent State, Miami and Toledo will also be competing on the women's side. The Golden Flashes and RedHawks will be in the white division, and the Rockets will run in the blue division.
The meet will take place at the LaVern Gibson Championship Golf Course at the Wabash Valley Family Sports Center. The women's open race starts at 2:30 p.m. tomorrow.
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Julie Goldberg
