Cross Country team travels to Maine for Invitational

The men's cross country team travels to Bangor, Maine, this weekend to compete in the Murray Keating Invitational. At the Invitational, the Hoosiers, who took the top five spots in last week's Indiana Intercollegiates, will face much stiffer competition from Butler University, the University of Florida and top-ranked Stanford University.\nIn order to make it to the NCAA Championships, the Hoosiers must record victories over certain teams that will make it out of each region. IU must defeat Florida, the favorites to make it out of the South Region. \n"Our main purpose in going to Maine is to beat the University of Florida," coach Robert Chapman said. "The way you qualify via an at-large bid for the NCAA Championships involves head-to-head wins over teams who can automatically qualify. Florida is in a weak region, so they are a big favorite to automatically qualify. As long as we don't do anything stupid and run up to our potential, we should be able to beat them."\nAs well as helping to secure a bid to the NCAA Championships, Chapman knows that this is not the most important meet of the season. The climax of the season is still to come and running against tough competition will be a good way to prepare for the big meets.\n"A secondary goal is to prepare us for the pre-NCAA meet in two weeks," Chapman said. "We will need to run well there to secure our bid to the NCAAs, so we can use this meet to basically test ourselves."\nThe Hoosiers have been training hard all through the early months of the season. Although they want to run well, their coach knows the importance of peaking at the right time during the season. \n"In terms of importance, this meet is pretty low compared to the four meets that follow it (pre-NCAAs, Big Tens, the NCAA regional and the NCAAs)," Chapman said. "The last thing I want to do is disrupt our training for this meet or get anybody hurt in the process. We kept our mileage up and the race on Saturday simply takes the place of a hard workout."\nThe Hoosiers then have a weekend off before competing in the pre-NCAAs.\nOn Saturday, the 19th-ranked IU women's cross country team travels to Terre Haute for the second time this season to compete in the Indiana State Invite at the LaVern Gibson Championship Course. The Hoosiers were in Terre Haute two weeks ago for the Indiana Intercollegiates when the team won the meet and senior Audrey Giesler finished first overall, running 17:47, for her first individual collegiate cross country title.\nLast weekend, the Hoosiers competed at the Roy Griak Invitational at the Les Bolstad Golf Course on the University of Minnesota campus. The team finished 15th with freshman Kristin Whitezell finishing 87th in a field of 254, running 22:24.\nCoach Judy Wilson has not entered the top three Hoosier harriers, Giesler, sophomore Lindsay Hattendorf, and junior Mindy Peterson.\nThe race begins at 11 a.m. on the LaVern Gibson Championship Course in Terre Haute.