The Bradley cross country team will have home-course advantage this weekend as the team hosts the Bradley Intercollegiate. Head coach Darren Gauson said the team will look to continue their strong start to the year as they run their second meet.
Bradley will welcome several regional teams, most notably Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Western Illinois, Eastern Illinois and Chicago State. While still early in the season, Gauson said he will use the home meet as a way of gauging his teams ability level and of getting another look at young runners.
Whoever is healthy will be out there running, Gauson said. We will be able to see who is ready to go.
The Braves will run their full rosters, even players who are redshirted. With such a large freshmen class on both the mens and womens sides. Gauson said he has a good opportunity to see how the freshmen are developing.
Now in his third year at the helm of the program, Gauson said he believes each year his team has shown improvement and added more depth.
We are way ahead of where we were two years ago and considerably improved from last year at this time, Gauson said. On the womens side, last year we had Hannah [Witzcak] running really well at this point, but this year, we have six or seven women running really well.
In addition to the Bradley Intercollegiate, the Braves will host the Bradley Invitational on Oct. 6 and the Bradley Pink Classic on Oct. 13. Gauson said he expects his team to run well on their home courses.
I have high expectations for all of our home meets this year, and we want to win them all, Gauson said.
The mens race begins at 5 p.m., and the womens competition will start at 5:45 p.m. at Detweiller Park.
