Men’s cross country season set to start

MILLIGAN, Tenn. (Sept. 17, 2020) – With a strong core of returners and a strong set of newcomers, the Milligan University men's cross country team is ready to roll for the 2020 season, set to start Friday. The Buffs endured an extended preseason with a small delay to the start but still have four meets on the regular-season schedule to precede the Appalachian Athletic Conference Championships.

Milligan enters the season having won the AAC Championship three of the last five years, including a title in 2019 when Nathan Baker and Tim Thacker finished as the individual champion and runner-up.

Head Coach Chris Layne expresses some goals for the men, particularly noting the AAC and NAIA Championships.

"The goal for the men is to defend last season's AAC title," Layne says, "but then we have high hopes as it relates to what can be done on a national scale."

Last season, the Buffs took the trip out to Vancouver, Washington, for the NAIA meet where they finished 14th, their highest mark since 2008 when they finished 16th. It marked their sixth top-30 finish since 2003.

Meeting the team

Baker and Thacker highlight a stout group of returners, alongside Alex Mortimer, Sam Wehner, Jake Crow, Andrew Burton and Pablo Rivas. Baker (22nd) and Thacker (54th) took the top two spots at the 2019 national championships, with Mortimer (59th) and Crow (169th) cracking the top 200 and Burton (235th) and Rivas (236th) cracking the top 250.

"The majority of our returnees are in a really good spot," Layne says. "They're veterans and you can count on them to have put in the summer work. Tim Thacker has had a really good summer, and guys like Eli Baldy and Drew Burton seem to have picked up right where they left off last year."

Layne notes his incoming class of freshmen who will help reinforce the depth of the team and push for faster times, not just this year but in years to come.

"What I'm also impressed with is where our freshmen men seem to be fitness-wise," he says. "This is a really good group of returnees, but I think we'll have a number of freshmen fighting for top seven spots. There are literally 8-10 guys that I see having the potential to keep this thing going for the next few years – Aaron Jones, Eli Cramer, Seth Jinks, Keaton Hincher and a number of other men that have come in having put in a great deal of work the last few months."

A look at the schedule

Milligan starts the season Friday with a trip to Montreat for the Montreat Cross Country Kickoff. The Buffs will then compete each of the next two Fridays after that: Sept. 25 at Bryan, then Oct. 2 at home against Bryan and Tennessee Wesleyan. The home meet will run along the banks of Buffalo Creek.

The regular season will wrap up with the AAC preview on Saturday, Oct. 17. The schedule will be exclusively AAC competition, a positive in terms of quality of competition, both for the men and the women, Layne says.

"The AAC is quickly becoming one of the strongest conferences in the country," he says. "With our women and SCAD Atlanta's women, you have two of the top eight teams at last year's national championship. Then we return a deep squad on the men's side and Montreat is in a similar situation. Two men's teams that were top 10 at the indoor national championships with a lot of those points coming from the distances."

Due to COVID-19 related changes in the NAIA's championship schedule, the NAIA Cross Country National Championships are currently scheduled for Friday, April 9, 2021. On the uncertainty of the season and adjustments to the championship schedule, Layne says it is all about controlling what his teams can control.

"We really have to take this one day at a time," he says. "Execute each day to the best of our ability and then let things play out how they will. We're just excited to get back to what we love, and I know they're going to be extremely excited to pull the jersey over their heard and line up in a race environment."