University of Washington’s cross country teams head down to Terre Haute, Indiana this weekend for the NCAA National Division I Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Championship races, which take place on Monday morning. Should be interesting, it’s no big deal--the women are only returning as defending National Champions since they clinched the very first NCAA Championship in program history last year.

It’s been 11 years since a UW program has successfully defended a National Championship. (Women’s Crew won back-to-back titles in 1997 and 1998.) But as the No. 1-ranked women’s team is so far undefeated this year, with eleven straight wins dating back to last season, let’s just hope nothing goes horribly, horribly wrong.

The women have been consistently strong all year, ranked No. 1 since the preseason, while the men’s team has rallied to tiptoe up the charts, ranked 24th nationally preseason and entering the NCAA Championships ranked as 17th. The men’s team placed 18th at Nationals last year.

UW is hosting a live viewing of the race Monday morning at the Ram Restaurant in the University Village Mall. Doors open at 9:00 a.m. The race will be also streamed on CBS college sports and NCAA.com. VERSUS (formally Outdoor Life Network) will be televising the meet as well. Or, keep tabs via UW’s track & field twitter feed. Men’s race begins at 9:08 a.m. PST, Women's at 9:58 a.m.

Filed in News and tagged cross country, Huskies, NCAA, University of Washington, UW

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