The men’s and women’s cross coun­try teams have sev­eral new faces and return­ing play­ers for the 2010–2011 season.

During the 2009–2010 sea­son, the women’s team posted an 11^th-place fin­ish in the NCAA Division II National Championships and fin­ished 3^rd in the Division II Midwest Regional. The team locked up a 2^nd-place fin­ish in the GLIAC Championships, with Grand Valley State tak­ing the title. The Bulldog women’s team will look to con­tinue this suc­cess as it begins prepar­ing for competition.

Senior Tina Muir, along with last year’s entire ros­ter, is return­ing for another shot at a GLIAC title. Muir, who took first place in the GLIAC a sea­son ago despite bat­tling an injury, but has since recov­ered and is antic­i­pat­ing this sea­son now that she is com­pletely healthy. Muir said she is glad that she went through that adver­sity that came from her injury and believes she has come back a stronger per­son both phys­i­cally and mentally.

“Team expec­ta­tions are hard to pre­dict, but our first goal is to get into nation­als again,” said Muir. “A top 10 at Nationals should be achiev­able and we would love to achieve top eight.”

Seniors Megan Josey and Paige Onweller, along with sopho­more Anna Rudd, are also return­ing this year. With each run­ner being piv­otal pieces to the suc­cess of the team, cross coun­try head coach Steve Picucci says he is hop­ing the older ath­letes will step up and help all the younger team mem­bers adjust and pre­pare for the season.

“We had a very tal­ented group of fresh­man last year and this year’s team has a num­ber of new faces that we are hop­ing can con­tribute to our suc­cess this year,” said Picucci.

The men’s cross coun­try team will look to con­tinue build­ing on the improve­ments of recent years. After tak­ing 5^th place in the GLIAC Championship last sea­son, with junior Tyler Crossman lead­ing the way with a 12^th-place indi­vid­ual fin­ish, the men’s team plans to show that the hard work it has put in over the sum­mer will pay off.

“Our goal is to improve on our per­for­mances from last year and look for improve­ments from every­one over last year’s races,” said Picucci. “The main thing we learned from last year is you have to fight for every spot in our region and con­fer­ence races. The com­pe­ti­tion is so close that every spot matters.”

The men have sev­eral run­ners return­ing for the fall sea­son includ­ing senior Alex Best and sopho­mores Alex Bladecki and Crossman.

The cross coun­try teams will begin the sea­son on Sept. 3 at the Northwood Open. n