Men's cross-country hopes to chase down NCAA invite
On the bus ride back from Missouri, the Iowa men's cross-country team had their laptops out. The Hawkeyes had just placed sixth in the NCAA Midwest Regional meet, and the harriers were eagerly scouring the Internet for speculation on whether they would earn a berth in the NCAA national meet.
The Hawkeyes saw that Flotrack.com — a cross-country and track website that head coach Larry Wieczorek said has "almost 100 percent accuracy" in predicting the national meet's qualifiers each year — said the Hawks would be the last team to sneak into the field.
But Wieczorek wasn't so sure. He thought about a meet earlier in the season when his team came just two points shy of beating a very good Arkansas team.
Iowa fell one spot short of a nationals berth last season.
Having lost only one key runner from that squad, the Hawkeyes are hungry to qualify this season. They will begin to make their case today when they host Northern Iowa, Illinois State, and Missouri-Kansas City in the Hawkeye Invitational at the Ashton Cross-Country Course.
To have postseason success, Wieczorek believes the team needs to become "interchangeable parts," in which the squad's fifth-best runner can be its top finisher in any given race.
"If you're here, we expect you to be able to get in there and get the job done," he said.
The team's core is built around its top two runners, star sophomore Jeff Thode and senior captain Mark Battista. Wieczorek expects consistent production from the pair of returning All-Region honorees.
Beyond that duo, Iowa's roster contains considerable talent clouded in question marks.
Sophomore Nick Holmes is an expected top-five finisher, but he first must return from a summer leg injury. Junior Chase Kadlec finished the spring track season with a breakout 5,000-meter run, but he must carry that success over to the cross-country course. Freshman Andrew Smith has the potential to contribute immediately, Wieczorek said, but has yet to run in a college race.
A strong candidate to join Thode and Battista in the Hawkeyes' top five is junior Sam Bailin, who finished third at the Hawkeye Invitational last season before missing the rest of the year with injury.
Bailin is healthy and thinking big this year.
The Hawkeyes begin the season ranked fifth in the Midwest region, which would likely be high enough to get them into the national meet. To be a "legitimate NCAA team," the coach said, a team should have five runners finishing in under 25 minutes.
"This could be a really good team," Wieczorek said, "Or it could be just a so-so team. Who's going to step up?"
Battista is confident he has an answer for his coach.
"Anybody who wants it," he said. "We're a deep team."
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