The Concordia University men’s and women’s cross country teams will compete in the 2009 NAIA Cross Country National Championships on Nov. 21 in Vancouver, Wash. The Championships will take place at the Fort Vancouver Historical Site with the Cascade Collegiate Conference and Concordia University (Ore.) hosting the event.
The National Championships are free and open to the public. The men’s race begins at 10:30 a.m. PST, and the women’s race follows at approximately 11:45 a.m. PST. The Fort Vancouver Historical Site, located near Portland, Ore., boasts a successful record for hosting world class cross country championship events, including USA Men’s and Women’s Cross Country National Championships and World Cross Country Trials.
32 women’s teams, including 23 conference/independent/unaffiliated champions, two conference runners-up, six at-large bids, one host berth and 117 individual qualifiers, will run in the 5K race.
The men’s 8K race will also welcome 32 teams, including 22 conference/independent/unaffiliated champions, eight at-large bids, one conference runner-up, one host berth and 102 individual qualifiers.
For a list of the men’s qualifiers, visit
http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/naia/sports/m-xc/auto_pdf/M_Nat_Qualifiers.pdf
For a list of the women’s qualifiers, visit
http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/naia/sports/w-xc/auto_pdf/W_Nat_Qualifiers.pdf
For more information on the 2009 National Championships, visit
http://naia.cstv.com/genrel/2009MWXCChampionships.html
To reach the official National Championships website, visit
http://cascadeconference.org/index.aspx?paht=championshipshttp://cascadeconference.org/index.aspx?tab=crosscountry&path=championships
Update from Vancouver
Dana Schmidt, a sophomore on the men's team, checks in with the latest news:
Thursday night
Wednesday morning we woke up around 5:45 a.m. to get ourselves into the vans and on our way to Omaha. Though I haven't seen a day before 6:00 a.m. in quite awhile, I was alert and excited. The rest of the team seemed to feel the same way. We all were talking and laughing the whole way to the airport. The rest of the day was flying and checking into the hotel. Nothing too exciting, but Coach Einspahr did receive a call during the flight somewhere over Idaho.
Today, we woke up around 8:00 a.m. and piled into our vans to head towards Mt. St. Helens. It was awesome to see the Washington countryside. It's definitely different than good ol' Seward. 100+ ft. trees are everywhere that you look. I love it. We stopped at the Silver Lake Visitor's Center which had a theater that played an educational film all about the Mt. St. Helens disaster of 1980. It was quite interesting, but when we left the center and drove up towards the mountain the reality of that disaster really set in. It's one thing to imagine what it would have been like while watching a movie, but to drive through the valley where most of the damage was done was humbling to say the least.
After our mountain adventure, we came back to Vancouver and ran the course that we will be racing on Saturday. Doing this shocked me a little bit. All of Wednesday and most of Thursday, this trip seemed to be a leisurely vacation. Once we got on that course, I remembered that this trip was all business. The team reflected my mood change. It was very exciting to visualize our upcoming race. Until this point, I really wasn't ready for the national meet. But now I feel like our whole team is ready to do something special.
We have had a blessed season so far. We have been very consistent throughout the whole year and I think Coach has done a great job of priming us to perform our best this coming weekend. Our team chemistry is wonderful and I feel extremely blessed to be a part of it. I am so excited! The next few days should be very interesting.