FAIRFAX, Va. – Cross country season comes to a close with one final championship meet for the George Mason men's and women's cross country teams.

The Patriots head up to the Bronx to compete in the ECAC/IC4A Cross Country Championships on Saturday morning at Van Cortlandt Park in New York. The first race begins at 10 a.m. on Saturday. The meet caps off the 2016 season and wraps up three straight championship meets as Mason competed in the Atlantic 10 Championships last month and the NCAA Southeast Regional Championships last week.

The men are coming off placing 13th at the Southeast Regional last Friday, matching their USTFCCCA Southeast Regional ranking. Atlantic 10 All-Conference selection Logan Miller paced the Patriots. The women placed 25th at the regional, led for the sixth straight meet by All-Conference sophomore Ciara Donohue and junior Amber Hawkins.

"Our expectation on the men's side is continuing what we've done, which is continuing to compete up front," head coach Andrew Gerard said. "We're hopefully going to compete at the front and compete aggressively. The same strategy – tight pack and keep moving forward. On the women's side, it is another opportunity for our second group to get more championship experience. The more experience the young athletes can have, the better off they are going to be. And the top two ladies (Donohue and Hawkins) the focus is going to be on getting back toward the front and in a good competitive spot in a championship race."

Last year, the men finished fifth at the ECAC/IC4A Championships and the women placed sixth. Both teams have gradually improved this season. The men won three invitationals and placed fourth at the A-10 Championships, which was one spot better than their 2015 finish. The women took second at the Mason Invitational and sixth at the VertCross Invitational in North Carolina while matching their 2015 finish at the A-10 Championships by taking 11th.

"The women across the board have improved by good, solid, in some cases, very big chunks, objectively, time-wise," Gerard said. "The men, I think individually have run well. We would like to keep pushing forward and as a collective group push each other forward a little bit more. But I can't fault the individuals because on an individual basis they've generally run better than they have before. We'd like the whole to be greater than sum of its parts. I think that is the next challenge for the men's team is to continue to come together as a whole and challenge each other to push forward."