University of Alaska Fairbanks Athletics

Men's Schedule | Women's Schedule

FAIRBANKS, Alaska – One home competition and a NCAA Division I meet highlight the 2016 men's and women's cross country running schedule, which was announced by second-year head coach Nick Crawford on Monday.

This upcoming season, both the men's and women's cross country programs will compete in four regular season meets, not including the Great Northwest Athletic Conference championships or the NCAA West Region championships. The Nanooks will get several opportunities to scout their fellow GNAC opponents, as nearly every meet will pit the Nooks against a GNAC team.

"I'm looking forward to the 2016 cross country season and very pleased with how our schedule came together," head coach Nick Crawford said on Monday. "The beginning of the season will look a little different for us than it has been in year's past with no intercollegiate competition in early September, but we will continue to have one home race to prepare us for our bigger meets out of state."

The Nanooks will open the 2016 campaign with by hosting the Blue and Gold race, their only home meet of the season on Saturday, Sept. 10. The details for the Blue and Gold race are still being determined by the Alaska cross country running staff but details will be available to the public soon.

Exactly a week later (Sept. 17), the Nanooks will head to Seattle, Washington to participate in one of the most prestigious cross country meets on the West Coast – the Sundodger Invitational, hosted by NCAA Division I institution, the University of Washington. There, the Nanooks will not only compete against other NCAA Division I schools, but many fellow-NCAA Division II schools around the Pacific Northwest area as well.

After a two-week break, Crawford's teams will travel to Salem, Oregon to participate in the Charles Bowles Willamette Invitational on Oct. 1. The meet is usually popular with mostly NCAA Division III schools, with the exception of a couple GNAC competitors. The following weekend, the Nooks will travel to Bellingham, Washington to take part in the Western Washington Invitational on Oct. 8, where Alaska will be looking to take advantage of the WWU invitational course, which will also play host to this year's GNAC championships on Oct. 22.  

"In the middle of the season, our focus will be on seeing how we do compared to our GNAC rivals, but we'll also have a chance to mix up our racers with the DI teams at the Sundodger Invitational and with the DIII teams in the Charles Bowles Invitational," Crawford explained.

Following the GNAC championships at WWU, the Nanooks will have two weeks to prepare for the 2016 NCAA Division II West Regional, which will be held in Billings, Montana on Nov. 5. Teams that finish in the top-three at the West Regional will move on to the 2016 NCAA Division II Cross Country championships on Nov. 21 in Saint Leo, Florida. In addition, the top-three individual finishers, not from one of the top-three finishing teams, will also advance to the NCAA Division II championships and if an individual places inside the top-five, and is not from one of the top-three finishing teams, will also advance to the championships.

Crawford concluded, "The end of the season will be familiar to us with a very similar schedule to what we've done in the past. We'll use the Western Washington Invitational to preview the courses that the GNAC championships will be run on two weeks later and then we head to Billings for the NCAA West Regionals, which were also held there in 2014."

For more information on the Alaska Nanooks men's and women's cross country running teams, follow @AlaskaNanooksXC on Twitter or like the Alaska Nanooks XC team page on Facebook.