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The NCAA Division I Cross Country National Championship will be contested on Saturday in Madison, Wisconsin and feature the
Eastern Kentucky men's team, Tennessee Tech's
Purity Sanga and Belmont's
Jacob and Kaleb McLeod.
The national championships will be at the Thomas Zimmer Championship Cross Country Course with the women's 6K race beginning at 10:45 a.m. CT and the men's 10K race beginning at 11:45 a.m. CT.
The Eastern Kentucky men's cross country team punched its ticket to the NCAA Championships by finishing second overall at the NCAA Southeast Regional. The Colonels, ranked No. 21 in the country, scored 90 points on the day, losing only to N.C. State (83) in a very tight race. This marks EKU's sixth all-time trip to the NCAA Championships and first since 2015. The Colonels advanced to the national championship meet five consecutive years, from 2011 to 2015; its highest finish was 15th in 2013.
EKU is led by redshirt freshman
James Sugira, the OVC Athlete of the Year and Athlete of the Championship, who won the Southeast Region Championship with a 10K time of 29:26.9. He was the first EKU runner to win the Regional since 2012. Colonel seniors Jaime Romo and Erick Rotich also earned All-Region honors a weekend ago. Rotich was 90th at the 2015 NCAA Championship and 105th in 2016.
Sanga, the OVC Athlete of the Year and OVC Athlete of the Championship, advanced to the NCAA Championship for the second-straight year. A year ago she finished 217th at the Championship. At this year's South Regional, she covered the 6K course in 20:43.0, to place seventh out of 208 competitors. It was the top Regional finish in TTU program history.
This marks the fifth-consecutive year that an OVC female runner has earned an at-large berth to the National Championship. The highest finish for an OVC female came in 2007 by Samford's Lauren Blankenship (24th).
Jacob, the OVC Freshman of the Year, and his brother Kaleb become just the fourth and fifth different Belmont runners to advance to the National Championship and first since Matt Miller in 2013. Jacob was fourth at the South Regional with a 10K time of 31:20.2 while Kaleb was seventh with a time of 31:25.1.
This marks the second-straight year that a male individual has earned an at-large berth to the Championship (UT Martin's Edwin Kurgat did a season ago).