The cross country team has been ranked highly based on their performance last year.
The team is currently ranked number one in the nation in National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics preseason polls.
“Basically each summer around the end of July, we have to send off a form saying who is coming back, who we have lost from each team and how we expect to do,” said Matt Aguero, head coach of men and women’s cross country and track and field. “We compete in the Sooner Athletic Conference. Each conference nominates a coach to be one of our rankers, they rank the conference teams, then all the coaches that rank the conference teams rank the national rankings.”
According to Aguero, the season started out well in their first and only meet of the season but is expected to pick up.
“We have only ran one so far,” Aguero said. “We ran mostly our young athletes; the first one is always a little smaller.”
The team itself was ranked so highly this season because of their performance in last year’s season.
“Well, we won last year,” Aguero said. “And we have a lot of guys coming back. We have almost the majority of our team coming back.”
The team is only made up of about 20 runners in total, the top eight being made up of seniors.
“We have a few freshmen,” Aguero said. “Our top runners are all seniors this year.”
Max Elkiss, music theater graduate, was excited about the success the team has had so far this year.
“I think it’s really cool,” Elkiss said. “It’s awesome to see a sports team representing OCU like this, definitely just seeing the excellence in academics, performance, as well as athletics.”
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