Team has chance of advancing

The No. 11 men's cross country team ran well enough at the Great Lakes Regionals to likely secure a bid to the National Championships.\nThe Hoosiers came in fifth behind Central Michigan and three Big Ten teams: Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio State.\nThe probable bid to the NCAA Championships would be the Hoosiers' third in the last four years. IU beat a couple of ranked teams, No. 18 Notre Dame and No. 28 Eastern Michigan.\nSophomore Sean Jefferson led the way for the Hoosiers with a third place finish, running his personal best time in the 10 kilometer of 30:41. IU coach Robert Chapman called Jefferson's performance his best race since Big Tens last year.\nBehind Jefferson were two fifth-year seniors, Chris Powers in 20th and Chad Andrews in 29th. Rounding out the Hoosiers' scoring were sophomores Eric Redman and Stephen Haas.\nChapman was pleased with his team's effort, but he knows that the most important meet is still to come.\n"For the Regional, the focus is less on getting certain individuals to step up, and more on having the whole group run a solid effort to get the team into the Nationals," Chapman said in a statement. "We view this more as a qualifying heat rather than a 'final' race. We tend to do a conservative first 5K, and then make our move on the second five. That (second 5K) always determines how well we do."\nRedman also believe that the Regional meet was important but was just another stepping stone to Nationals.\n "We got through it well," Redman said. "We knew it was going to be a tough race, but we want to have our best race at Nationals. We did what we needed to do to get into Nationals. But this year we are in a better position going into Nationals, because we are ready to have our last race be our best."\nHaas had similar comments about the meet.\n"Regionals was a pretty good race for us, but all year we have had one or two guys run especially good races, and we just can't get everyone to run great at one race," Haas said. "I really think Nationals can be that race."\nWith the Regionals behind them, the Hoosiers have only one race remaining in their 2003 season. \nThe National Championships will be next Monday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.\n-- Contact staff writer Alex Witteveld at pawittev@indiana.edu.