The Penn State women's cross-country team has spent the early part of the season trying to see how it stacks up. The Nittany Lions will get their best opportunity to do so this weekend when they travel to Iowa State's course in Ames, Iowa, for the Pre-National meet.
Since the course will also be the site for the NCAA championship meet, there will be loads of the nation's best teams in Ames trying to scope out the scene. In all, there will be 64 women's cross country teams and more than 400 runners at the home of the Cyclones on Saturday.
"You can pretty much name any of the top teams, and they'll probably be there," said Penn State coach Beth Alford-Sullivan.
There will be seven top 10 squads including No.1 Stanford, No.2 Colorado, No.3 BYU, the defending national champion, and No. 5 Kansas State.
The Lions will be particularly interested in how they stack up against the teams in the Big Ten and Mid-Atlantic Region. Big Ten powerhouse Wisconsin, the defending conference champion that ranks No. 6 in the nation at the moment, will send a squad. No. 7 Georgetown and No.18 Villanova, the seven-time national champion, will highlight the regional contingent. West Virginia, Navy, and Bucknell, also from the region, will likely be the teams Penn State is most concerned about. All three teams defeated the Lions previously in the season. The Lions did defeat Navy last week, so they are anxious to see if they have improved enough to exact revenge on the other two teams as well.
"Beating Navy gives us a lot more confidence," senior co-captain Beth Buchheit said. "That shows us that we're that much more fit than we were at the beginning of the season and that we might be able to beat some other teams that beat us before."
The Lions will have to keep their eyes on the rest of the schools as well. At-large bids are largely determined by teams' performances in meets before the regional.
"There are definitely a number of teams we'd like to knock off here," Alford-Sullivan said. "We really want to beat the teams like West Virginia and Bucknell that beat us earlier, but it would be a great accomplishment if we could knock off some teams that will get automatic bids from weaker regions, and get us some exposure that we might need for an at-large bid."
Alford-Sullivan expects the pack-running she stressed earlier in the season to be extremely important in this meet.
"Points are desperate in these meets," she said. "We need a front-runner to go out there and get us a very low score, but we also need the runners after that to stay together and keep their performances close. We want to make sure the No. 4 and 5 runners aren't too far back in the pack, and tighten up the higher scores. I think our runners will do a good job of that."
The Lions expect tensions to be eased because they are sticking to the same strategy they have clung to all season.
"We haven't been in a meet yet with this kind of size or competition, but we've been trying to run in packs all year. It makes the meet a lot less intimidating when we know that we're just going to go out and do what we always do. Coach has prepared us very well for this type of pressure," Buchheit said.
The Lions will only get to run seven runners in the "A" meet. There will also be a "B" meet for the alternates that travel to the race. Coach Alford-Sullivan picked her "A" team based on the results of the National Invitational, which means seniors Susanne Heyer, Shelly Brand, Erin Davis, and Buchheit will run with juniors Kim DeNovellis, Elizabeth Sharkey and Stacie Bouchard.
"It will still be a little bit overwhelming," said Buchheit. "It will be a learning experience for everybody, but everyone running is experienced. We've been in big meets before, so I think we'll deal with the pressure well."
