The season is winding down for the cross country team with the Big 12 Championships this Saturday. The runners will be competing in the event after a season of a new coach and new practice schedule, which included earlier practices and more of an emphasis on weight training.

“The conference meet is the most important meet of the year,” said assistant coach Michael Whittlesey. “It’s where you want to stack up against everyone in the conference and show your best.”

Last year both the men’s and women’s teams finished in 8th place.

“We want to improve on how we did in the past,” senior Kellie Schneider said. “We want to get in the top five.”

This year they hope to improve, as results have shown they have been all year. When they ran on the same course at the beginning of the year in the Missouri Cross Country Challenge, many of the runners cut off significant amounts of time. The top five returning finishers on the men’s side cut 1:30 off their time. The top four returning finishers on the women’s side cut off at least 30 seconds with sophomore Rebeka Stowe showing the most improvement by cutting off 1:20.

“They’ve all gotten a lot faster since the beginning of the year,” Whittlesey said. “We are really starting to establish who our one through five runners are, especially on the women’s side. We know exactly how we run best as a team and collectively and we’ve been able to finetune our race strategy based off how people are performing in each meet.”

Some of this has to do with more experience. The returning runners are getting older and learning how hard they can push themselves.

“I think that the quality of the workouts that he’s had are much better,” senior Bret Imgrund said. “He does a better job of explaining things, also, and why we’re doing stuff and is just able to connect with the team a lot better.”

This weekend’s competition will prove what effect the new training will have on the team.

— Edited by Lauren Cunningham