The Redpack is back to follow up on their 2023 North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) Championship with another successful season. The team will take on their season one step at a time, leaning on the process-driven mentality of Head Cross Country Coach Tyler McCreary and letting the results speak for themselves.
The team’s training started in the summer, where the team put in their own personal hours to get ready for the intense fall season.
“The summer is the most important part of the cross country season,” said McCreary. “It’s a chance for a lot of mileage and tempo work, hill reps and things of that nature. Then we come back here in the fall, when we can start to fine tune things. Cross country is really unique in that a three month stretch by yourself is what makes or breaks your season.”
This year, McCreary is more focused on seeing the team trust its process of getting gradually better over the season than focusing on repeating as conference champions– although their process leads in that direction.
“Ultimately, we would love to win another conference championship, but we’ve had a mentality of going through the process,” said McCreary. “We just want to see how good we can be, and we’ll just let the chips fall.”
With a roster he can put full confidence in, McCreary has added the Gil Dodds Invitational to the schedule this season to help push the team towards their next step.
“We chose a couple of new meets we don’t normally go to,” said McCreary. “That’s because we just have a more veteran team that I think is ready to take the next step and compete every two weeks with some of the best competition in the region and nationally.”
After graduating just three seniors last season, the team boasts a strong veteran lineup with a packed eight-man freshmen class coming in. Drake Hayes ’24 and Joe Barnett ’24 both played significant roles in last year’s conference title. However the team has a competitive set of returning runners who will look to fill the open spots.
“I am looking forward to building off last year’s momentum from our successful season,” said Will Neubauer ’25. “We have an exciting freshman class this year so I am excited to see how they grow this year.”
All four members of the senior class– Neubauer, Brayden Curnutt ’25, Jacob Sitzman ’25 and Justin Santiago ’25 – received all-conference honors last season along with Haiden Diemer-McKinney ’26.
“Leadership will be the big thing that the veterans will massively help with,” said Curnutt, who finished ninth overall at the NCAC meet last year. “The freshmen can learn from people who have been on the team and know how to run the longer distances of cross country. Along with that, the veterans have been around the program and know how to race competitively and competently which will (hopefully) lead to satisfying results throughout the year.”
With all the momentum of previous seasons and a summer of hard work behind them, the cross country team is in good shape to have a season well-worth remembering. The Redpack will run in the annual Wabash College Alumni Run on Sunday, August 25. Their first competition will be the Franklin College Invitational held at the Blue River Cross Country Course on September 7.