The men’s cross country team will gauge its progression since the offseason coaching transition at its first meet of the season.

CMU will host the Jeff Drenth Memorial at 4 p.m. today. Like the women, the men will compete against Michigan State and Alma College.

“This is what we call kind of a low key meet to kind of feel out and see where we are at, see how the summer training went and to try and figure out who’s going to be traveling throughout the year,” said assistant coach Matt Kaczor. “Also, (we will see) what we are going to do with our underclassmen, how we are going to deal with redshirting (and) all that kind of stuff to see where people fall into place.”

Although the team is young, Kaczor said this first meet will help him find a lot more out about the core of this team.

“I need to see who is going to be ready and who is going to help us out as we move further down the road,” Kaczor said. “We have eight newcomers, seven freshmen and one transfer, and three weeks is not a lot of time to figure out what they’ve done and how they work best.”

Expectations

MAC-Sports.com’s preseason poll has the Chippewas picked to finish third in the Mid-American Conference this year.

Key returning runners include seniors Riak Mabil and Jacob Korrir and juniors Chris Pankow, Cory Arnold, Sammy Kiprotich and Adam Smith also are expected to contribute.

Mabil finished 12th out of 74 runners at last year’s Mid-American Conference Championship.

The mix of young and experienced talent has coach Willie Randolph keeping his expectations modest.

“The biggest expectation is to get out there, compete, have fun and find out exactly where the freshmen are going to be in the lineup as the year progresses,” Randolph said. “Expectations are not high; we just want to get out there and knock off some cobwebs and get some people into experience and go from there.

“It’s not about the beginning of the season as much as it is the midpoint and the end.”

E-mail the author: John Evans