Men's Cross Country | 9/28/2017 4:54:00 PM

Live Scoring

FAIRFAX, Va. – After two straight weekends without a meet, the George Mason men's and women's cross country teams jump back into action.

The Patriots host the Mason Invitational on Saturday morning at Oatlands Plantation in Leesburg. The women will compete on a 6K course at 10 a.m. and the men take off at 10:45 a.m. on an 8K course.

The invitational jump-starts the second half of Mason's season as the Patriots run every other weekend from here on out all the way through to the NCAA Southeast Regional Championships on Nov. 10. This weekend's meet also serves as preparation for the Atlantic 10 Championships, which will also be hosted by Mason at Oatlands Plantation on Oct. 28.

"This kind of kicks off the real season for us," head coach Andrew Gerard said. "We've trained through the first couple races… We are certainly not peaking for it. Our goal will be to definitely be better in four weeks when conference rolls around. It will be a good, challenging field and is a good measuring stick."

The Patriots have hosted the Mason Invitational at Oatlands Plantation each of the last seven years. This season, with less rain the past few months and clear skies in the forecast for Saturday, competitors will face a unique obstacle. A creek jets across the property but the last two years the water level has been too high so the course has been rerouted. This year, though, runners can expect to see a creek in their path.

"That section of the course is one of the more interesting sections," Gerard said. "There are not too many races where you get to splash across a creek. It has a nice trail section and a good roller-coaster hill in the back."

Eleven schools, including four from the Atlantic 10, will compete on Saturday: American (men only), Davidson (men only), Duquesne, George Washington, Hampton, Howard Community College, Norfolk State, Saint Joseph's, VMI and Youngstown State.

On the men's side, Duquesne was picked to finish second at the A-10 Championship – just one spot ahead of Mason. The Duquesne and George Washington women were picked to finish fourth and fifth, respectively, at the A-10 Championship.

After this weekend, the Patriots have just one more meet before championship season begins. They'll run in the Princeton Invitational on Oct. 14 and then host the A-10 Championship two weeks later. The NCAA Southeast Regional Championship takes place on Nov. 10 at Panorama Farms in Earlysville, Virginia, with the IC4A/ECAC Championships the next week in New York.

"From this point forward we would like to have the importance build," Gerard said. "(The Mason Invitational) is a good one. The Princeton meet is going to be about 20 teams, a little bigger. The conference meet obviously is not going to be 20 teams but it is going to be bigger in terms of emotional importance. The (NCAA) regional is even bigger than that and more challenging. So it moves up step-wise from this point forward."