The men's and women's cross country teams will race on the same course for the first time this season on Saturday in the Delaware Invitational at White Clay Creek State Park near the campus of the University of Delaware.  While expectations are high in every race for the Mason runners, Head Coach Andrew Gerard and Associate Head Coach Sita Waru-Ewell hope to see solid progression with the championship season quickly approaching.

"By and large this will be a different group of runners (from the first race) so we will have essentially the same goals as last week," said Gerard.  "We want to get the rust off, get moving and see where we are with the new crew of guys.  We split the group on the men's side every year because guys progress at different rates and we do not want to develop a pecking order too early in the season."

While the men's team will focus on building slowly and peaking at the end of the year, the women's team will attack this race with nearly all of their runners.

"We will have almost our whole lineup there on Saturday," said Ewell.  "I have found that the more the women compete, the more their confidence tends to increase, as does their understanding of how to run the cross country meets."

Led by junior Rochelle Sceats, this will be the first time the women will run a 6K race this season.  With several freshmen making an impact last race, Coach Ewell is interested to see how they will adjust to a longer course. "Rochelle will only get better with every race," reflected Ewell.  "We paired up well in our top five last time and I am very curious to see how some of our freshmen perform in their first time ever running a 6K.

Last year the men's and women's teams both finished second overall in the Delaware Invitational, with University of Delaware placing first for the men and Towson University winning the women's race.  Junior Alex Zyryanov finished second overall last year and first for Mason with a time of 25:41.55.  Senior Sandy Castro is Mason's top returning finisher from last year's race, placing fifth with a time of 18:53.13.

This year, Mason will race against Delaware, Bloomfield, Chesnut Hill, Gettyburg, Holy Family, Hood, Lincoln, Mississippi, Rutgers-Newark, Saint Joseph's Seton Hall, Stockton and Wilmington. 

"This meet will be pretty similar on a competitive level to last week," said Gerard.  "We expect that St. Joe's and Mississippi will probably figure prominently at the front but we, again, expect our front guys will be mixed in there and competing well." 

Coach Ewell is looking for consistency from top to bottom her lineup.  "I would like us to close the gap and have 10 runners that are within a minute to a minute and a half of each other and paired up, that's how you win championships."

The men's race will begin at 10:30 am with the women scheduled to begin at 11:15 am.