The Virginia men's and women's cross country teams will travel to Indiana Monday for the NCAA Championships, their last and most important race of the season. And even though in the past few weeks the men's and women's teams have seen their seasons take turns in vastly different directions, they both will enter the race with the same goal: Leave absolutely everything that they have on the course.
The 13th-ranked women are riding a recent wave of success and are coming off their two best performances of the season. During the past few weeks, the Cavaliers have placed second at the ACC Championships - behind only No. 2 Florida State - and have won the Southeast Region Championship for just the second time in school history.
"At ACCs and Regionals, coach [Jason] Vigilante said both times, 'Let's just give 80 percent,'" redshirt senior Stephanie Garcia said. "He told us, 'You don't have to go all out, you don't have to go 100 percent' because we are saving up for having an incredible experience at Nationals. So I think we're going to see all of our girls go all out."
The extent of their success has been a surprise because the team relies on a core of young talent. The women have turned their youth - with two true freshmen and a sophomore running in their top five - from an apparent weakness into an advantage.
"We have a lot of young energy and a lot of excitement about the sport and the season, which an older team may lack," Garcia said. "Older teams might be wiser but they also might be a little less excited about going to these meets. Most of our girls have never been to a regional or national meet, so they get excited and that allows them to bring such fresh energy to the course."
The men's team, meanwhile, has not been enjoying the same level of success, and now finds itself unranked for the first time all season. But despite coming in fourth at the ACCs and finishing a disappointing sixth at Regionals, the team still secured an at-large bid into the NCAA Championships. Throughout the season, the team has been plagued by the same problem - it has been unable to get consistent performances from any runners other than senior All-American Emil Heineking and redshirt junior Ryan Collins - something they are still trying to fix.
"We're just going to have to change things up a little bit," Collins said. "Basically try to get our three, four and five runners closer and moving up, [and] maybe be a little more patient in the beginning and run a strong last half of the race. We have to try to make it to the line a lot higher, really just be focused as team."
But even though the team has floundered, the runners believe that they are capable of performing much better.
"We've struggled throughout the season, but we just want to end the season on a high note," Collins said. "We feel like we've been capable of performing a lot better than we have all year and we really just want to take this opportunity to prove that. We'll have to give absolutely everything that we have, but if there's any time to do that, Nationals is that time."
Monday's races are set to begin at 11:45 a.m.
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