LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Bellarmine University cross country teams will compete in their second meet of the season Friday morning at the North Alabama Showcase in Huntsville, Alabama.

The 8k men's race will begin at 8:30 a.m. (ET) at John Hunt Park, while the women's 5k race will follow at 9:15 a.m.

LAY OF THE LAND
John Hunt Park is not only the location of the North Alabama Showcase, it's also the site of the ASUN Championship on Oct. 29.

Competing in the Showcase will double as a reconnaissance mission for Bellarmine and many other participating teams.

"It's very valuable for us to get the chance to preview the course in a race setting prior to the ASUN Championships in six weeks," Men's Coach Chase Broughton said. "Our guys will get a feel for the terrain of the course, how they feel at certain points in the race on this specific course and be able to learn from this weekend to help make their ASUN Championship race a little better the next time we race on this course."

"This will be a great opportunity for us to become very familiar with our championship course," Women's Coach Angela Hapner Musk said. "We'll get a good look and feel for the course on Thursday during our pre-race and then actually see what racing it is like on Friday."

THE SAME, BUT DIFFERENT
Bellarmine will do its due diligence in scoping out the course, but the Knights know the North Alabama Showcase and the ASUN Championship will be entirely different animals when it comes to the actual races.

While the latter is restricted to conference teams, Friday's meet will consist of dozens of squads.

"Team scores can shake out quite differently come championship weekend, especially for a team like us," Musk said. "We don't have a frontrunner who can be up in the lead pack this weekend and there are a lot of very competitive teams who are not in our conference, so there will be a lot of bodies in front of our first, whomever that is this weekend. And even with a tight front pack, we could still end up with a lot of bodies between each of our top 5. I don't expect that to be the case as much when we get down to a 14-team meet with limited entries at conference."

STRONG ASUN PRESENCE
While not every ASUN team will be competing at the North Alabama Showcase, a healthy amount on both the men's and women's sides are set to race.

"This will definitely give us a great idea of where we currently stand within the league and also give us a look at what other teams have at this point in the season," Broughton said. "This is definitely the first true test of the season. The main focus is going out and competing hard and seeing where we will stack up against teams from the surrounding area and from the ASUN."

A LOOK BACK
Bellarmine's squads opened the season Sept. 2 at Wright State's Mike Baumer XC Classic in Fairborn, Ohio.

Senior Emma Wells posted the 42nd-best 5k time (18:32.9) in women's program history, while freshman Sierra Oesterling cracked the program's performance list (measures PR) in 16th (18:45.7) in her collegiate debut. Wells, Oesterling and junior Anna Wells all placed in the top 30.

"The race at Wright State was a very good start for us," Musk said. "We're better than we were at our 2021 opener by a lot of measures. It's definitely exciting to start the season with some additions to the record book, but I want to stay focused on what we need to improve, which is condensing our front pack a little more and getting our second pack up closer to the first. Emma, Sierra, Anna and Justice (Pohlman-Singleton) worked really well together at the front. Our next pack — Chloe (Powell), Trisha (Sexton), Hannah (Ellis), Ellie (Schroeder) and Erin (Luckett) — also showed great teamwork and had a strong performance. I'm happy with the way they worked together, but I'd like to see them get closer to the top 4. I'd like to see someone from that group take a risk in the next couple of races and try to bridge that gap. Any of those ladies are capable of it."

The race had an abbreviated distance for the men, who also competed in a 5k instead of their customary 8k. Bellarmine had a partial squad in attendance.

Sophomore Jackson Gawarecki topped the Knights in 25th. Freshman Nolan White (44th) and sophomore Hunter Griffin (47th) were also top 50.

"The first race was average," Broughton said. "We had some solid performances, but also saw that we had some things to work on. Some guys made some mistakes early in the race that was a good learning experience for them. If they take what they learned two weeks ago into this weekend, I expect much better performances across the board."

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