The Virginia men's and women's cross country teams will travel to Louisville, Ky. this weekend to compete in the NCAA Southeast Regional Championships, which could be their last race of the season. A strong showing would earn the team a bid to the NCAA Championships in Indiana Nov. 22.
The No. 12 women's team, which finished second at the ACC Championships Oct. 30, will look to continue performing at the high level that has allowed the runners to achieve strong results thus far.
"I don't think we are thinking about it being the last race of the season," freshman Ariel Karabinus said. "We're not doing anything out of the ordinary or anything like that. We're doing pretty much what we've been doing all season. If we can be consistent and continue training exactly how we have been, we'll be fine."
The women's team's most impressive exploit of the season came at the ACC Championship race, where the Cavaliers upset two teams ranked above them en route to finishing second after No. 2 Florida State. At that meet, the Cavaliers - who will enter this weekend as the top-ranked team in their region - had three of their runners place ahead of the top finisher for Duke, which enters as the No. 2 team in the region after being ranked No. 1 since the start of the season.
"Definitely going in we knew we could race to that ability and it wasn't that much of a shocker to us," Karabinus said. "But seeing that as a conference meet and seeing how everything is clicking and coming together does give us some confidence. And now we can see where everyone needs to be compared to where everyone was [at that race], so we're thinking how can we close the gap even more or what can we do to be even better."
For the No. 21 men's team, the story is different, but the mindset remains the same. The men are coming off a fourth-place finish at the ACC Championships and will have been ranked as the No. 3 team in the region since the season's start.
"We're all just trying to not treat it like it's the last meet," junior Sean Keveren said. "But at the same time, we realize that if we don't perform this weekend, it will be the last meet. The level of focus is definitely higher than it has been at any point during the season."
The men also have no need for drastic changes. At the conference meet, their back-end runners did not meet expectations, but the team still finished only 11 points behind N.C. State, which will enter the weekend as the top team in the region.
"I don't think we have to do all that much more than we have," Keveren said. "We don't have to reinvent the wheel or anything to get there. It's just important that our 4, 5, 6, 7 runners get up in the front and get involved early so that we are where we need to be at the end of the race. I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation to get top two, but we are definitely going to have to perform well. "
A top-two finish would guarantee an automatic bid to Nationals and would eliminate having to go through the selection process, which factors in results from the entire season. But as much as the Cavaliers, like all other teams, would love to avoid that nerve-racking scenario, they still refuse to look at this race differently than any other.
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