Men’s cross-country runs in only home meet this weekend

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The Chippewas will try and take advantage of running on their own course in the 26th Annual Jeff Drenth Memorial at 11:30 a.m. Friday.

Junior Jason Drudge is one of the runners trying to start his season strong.

“It helps a lot knowing the course layout,” he said. “You know how to run the hills and when to make your move. We’ve run it two or three times already in order to be familiar with it.”

Assistant coach Matt Kaczor agreed being comfortable with a course helps.

“It’s a lot easier because our guys will know where the challenging parts of the course are, it provides a lot of comfort knowing that,” Kaczor said.

Director of cross-country Willie Randolph, agreed with Drudge and Kaczor.

“It brings a sort of confidence to the team, knowing that it’s home, and knowing when the hills are,” Randolph said.

Randolph said in the opener he wants to see how players adapted over the summer.

“The opening race really tells you how everyone has adapted over the summer, it does build excitement for the season,” he said. “You want to be cautious though because if a runner does very well or not, it doesn’t mean they are going to run like that the whole season.”

Kaczor believes it helps calm freshmen runners down.

“It’s a chance to see where our runners are at,” he said. “We aren’t running everyone and we are still trying to see who needs to be redshirted this year, so you won’t see everyone out there. It does however give younger runners more experience and helps them get rid of first race jitters.”

There is one team the Chippewas have put a target on.

“Running against a Big Ten Conference team is always fun. Michigan State will be here,” Randolph said. “Its head coach Walt Drenth, has quite a bit of history here, so it’d be fun to go out and compete with MSU and beat them, but make no mistake, we want to beat everyone else too.”

Drudge is one who wants to personally go out and beat the Spartans.

“I’d really like to beat Michigan State,” he said. “They have some freshmen on their team that CMU recruited pretty hard and they ended up choosing MSU over us. I’d like to go out there and beat them to show them why they should have came here instead.”

In order for CMU to beat MSU, the men’s team likely will have to earn the goals that Drudge has set.

“I want to put in a good showing. I’d like to get five guys to finish in the top ten or twelve because that’s the places where you get medals and awards,” he said. “I want us to run as a group and finish strong. If we are able to do that, I’ll be one happy guy.”