The UNK men’s cross country team has made the national meet three out of the last four years. This season, the team aims to replenish its lineup with three of the seven runners from nationals returning.
Despite making nationals, last year’s team dealt with more injuries than coach Brady Bonsall could recount in his 18 years at UNK.
“The number of injuries we had last fall, we’ve never had that before,” Bonsall said. “You know, the number of stress fractures we had.”
The mantra last year was to win ugly and set themselves up for an at-large bid to the national meet. This season, the margin for error will be slimmer, said redshirt senior Nick Abdalla.
“I’m not really scared or that, but we’re just gonna have to win, like, ugly,” Abdalla said. “Because this year is going to be tougher than last year.”
With 10 freshmen, plus runners returning from injury, there is uncertainty in what the lineup will look like this fall.
“We might get in here and find out that some of these people are better than they were a year ago, and maybe, you know, we are better off than we thought,” Bonsall said.
The team only has four meets on the schedule before the MIAA championships at the end of October, which puts more emphasis on training.
