The NCAA News - News and Features

November 3, 1997

Division II Men's Cross Country

Cal Poly Pomona's pack favored

Event: 1997 Division II Men's Cross Country Championships.

Overview: Cal Poly Pomona, third a year ago, looks to end a 14-year title drought. The nation's No. 1-ranked team as of October 21, the Broncos return five of their top seven runners from 1996. Leading the way are Mike Moreno and Warren Wolf, the 23rd- and 41st-place finishers in 1996. Also returning are seniors Jose Rangel, Bryan Ramos and junior Rondie Gibbs. "If we run as a pack, we'll be all right," said Broncos coach Jim Sackett. "We don't have the big up-front runner, but we have a group of guys who run together near the front." Cal Poly Pomona won this year's Wisconsin-Parkside Invitational, outdistancing Western State (ranked No. 3), Southern Indiana (No. 5) and Edinboro (No. 11) .... Central Missouri State, seeking its first title, boasts the division's top performer in Alexandr Alexin. The defending individual champion, Alexin leads a Mules squad seeking to improve on its 1996 sixth-place finish. Ranked No. 2 in the October 21 poll, the Mules also return Martin Fysh, 15th in 1996, and Nate Stroot .... Western State (the 1995 champion), South Dakota, Southern Indiana and Mankato State headline a group of as many as eight other teams with legitimate title hopes. South Dakota, which claimed the North Central Conference championship October 18, is led by Matthew Hoyt, Joel Fenske and Mike Gade. Hoyt claimed the conference individual title, outdistancing Jon Keillor of Mankato State, who placed 14th at the 1996 NCAA championships .... The Great Lakes and North Central regions each automatically will qualify five teams for the national championships. Three of the top six teams in the October 21 poll were from the Great Lakes region, while the North Central region boasted three of the top 10.

Field: A total of 132 individual competitors will be selected. Seventeen teams of seven individuals each -- with at least one team from each of six regions -- plus 13 individuals (at least two individuals from each region) will make up the field.

Dates and sites: Regional qualifying will be November 8 at six sites. The championships will be November 22 at Wisconsin-Parkside.

Information/results: The fax-on-demand telephone number is 770/399-3060 (passcode 1915); request numbers are 1285 for dates and sites and 5073 for championships results. Championships results also will be available on the World Wide Web at www.ncaa.org. Results will be published in the December 1 issue of The NCAA News.