Men's Cross Country | 10/25/2017 4:33:00 PM

Live Video | Live Results | Meet Central

FAIRFAX, Va. – The last time George Mason hosted a cross country conference championship, the Patriots were in a different conference.

So this Saturday should be a "special" day for the Mason teams and their fans.

Mason hosts the Atlantic 10 Conference Cross Country Championships at Oatlands Plantation in Leesburg. The Patriots last hosted a conference cross country championship in 2008 when still members of the Colonial Athletic Association.

The men's five-miler will begin at 10 a.m., with the women to follow with a 5K at 10:50 a.m. Admission is free. A live video stream of both races will be available on the Atlantic 10's website at atlantic10.com. For the live video stream, live results, course maps and directions to the course, click here.

"It is special because you get to be in front of your family and friends," Mason head coach Andrew Gerard said. "When you get to have your best day of the year in front of the home crowd I think it always gives you a little boost, a little pickup, a little edge. Maybe you kick a little harder, maybe you be a little more aggressive at different points with the crowd behind you. It is definitely something special. The fact that the cross country (championship) rotates a little more widely (from school to school) than track… we've gone years without hosting in cross.

"This is not just a once in a career type thing. It might not come around in some kids' careers. I think it is certainly cool to have it here at home."

The Patriots have made Oatlands Plantation a familiar home course. In each of the last eight seasons, they've hosted the Mason Invitational on the scenic property, which sits just off Highway 15 about six miles south of downtown Leesburg.

Atlantic 10 foes Saint Joseph's, Duquesne, Davidson and George Washington competed in the Mason Invitational last month but Gerard and the Patriots are ready to show off their home course, which includes jets through a creek, to the rest of the 13 schools in the league. Temperatures are expected to reach a high of 70 Saturday with mostly sunny skies.

"It is a beautiful spot," Gerard said. "We're hitting it a good time. The leaves are going to be changing. I think it is going to be very picturesque. It is just a beautiful location. With the trees in the backdrop and everything else, it is just very scenic."

Both the Mason men's and women's teams hope to make noise on Saturday – in different ways.

For the men, the Patriots placed fourth last year and were predicted to finish third at this year's championship in the preseason coaches poll. Redshirt seniors Logan Miller (a 2016 Atlantic 10 All-Conference performer) and Marcus Hatchett are the only two runners on the current roster who were on the team when Mason won the A-10 Championship in 2014.

Five schools have won the title the last five years and Gerard expects more parity this year, with the hope the Patriots can be up at the top in the mix again.

"I think there are four or five teams on any given day that could contend for the win," Gerard said. "There is a lot of parity. We finished fifth two years ago and we finished fourth last year. The three teams that beat us last year, none of them beat us when we finished fifth. So there was a complete reversal… It's going to be interesting. The teams that show up on that day and really have a good day are going to be the ones that move to the front. But I think it is more open than a lot of conferences."

The women finished 11 th last year and were projected to place ninth at this year's championship in the preseason coaches poll. Led by 2016 Atlantic 10 All-Conference runner Ciara Donohue, the Patriots have had a solid season. They finished third at the Mason Invitational last month, only nine points behind second-place Duquesne and 10 back from champion Saint Joseph's. This weekend, they hope to move further up the A-10 ladder.

"We've run a lot better this year," I think the goal is for our improvements to manifest themselves at the championship level, to show up at the championship level. Where that puts us? I really don't know… For us to be a lot more competitive with the meat of the league, the teams we want to be moving up and into, we want to use this as a stepping stone to move forward and say, 'We want to be moving toward contending for the title.' It is a lot to go from 11th to first in one year, but we want to be making progress."