SPOKANE, Wash. -- Whitworth University will travel to Salem, Oregon this Saturday for a chance to earn spots at the NCAA Division III cross country championships the following week. Willamette is hosting this weekends NCAA Division III Regional at Bush's Pasture Park. The hosts have created a meet website to prepare for and follow all the racing.

http://www.d3xc.com

Nick Gallagher

The men will race at 10:00 a.m., and the women will follow at 11:00 a.m. The top two teams at the regional, and the top seven individual finishers not on those teams, will qualify automatically for the national meet the following weekend. There are also some at-large spots, both team and individual, up for grabs as well.

Whitworth goes into the men's race as the champion of the Northwest Conference and the top-ranked team in the west region. However, competition will be stiff for the two top spots with NWC runner-up Willamette and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps - the champion of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletics Conference. Nick Gallagher (So., Bedford, Iowa) will lead the Pirate men after finishing second at the NWC Championships two weeks ago. One year ago he finished 11th in the regional to qualify individually for the national meet. Dusty Caseria (Jr., Bellingham, Wash.), who finished fourth at the NWC Championships, was also a national championship participant last year after finishing 16th at the regional and picking up one of the individual at-large berths. Both Aaron Jenkins (Fr., Pocatello, Idaho) and Emmanuel Bofa (So., Puyallup, Wash.) earned All-NWC honors two weeks ago.

The women's race has essentially the same favorites as the men's race. Willamette is the top-ranked team in the region and won the NWC championship on November 1st and C-M-S is the champion of the SCIAC. Whitworth, along with Whitman, hope to challenge those two for one of the two available automatic bids to the national meet. While the Pirate men's team has had a steady and fairly regular order of finish among its top seven runners this season, the women's team has been all over the map. Tonya Turner (Fr., Spokane, Wash.), Dana Misterek (Fr., Gig Harbor, Wash.) and Kathryn Williams (Fr., Santiago, Chile) have taken turns leading the team across the finish line. Whitworth hopes that overall team depth will lead to a high team finish.