UE cross country to close out the 2023 season at NCAA Great Lakes Regional

MADISON, Wisc. — The University of Evansville cross country teams will round out the 2023 season with one last meet in the Badger State.

The Purple Aces will end 2023 with their final 6K and 10K races in the NCAA Great Lakes Regional Championships. UE will bring eight women and two men to race midday on Friday, Nov. 10 on the Thomas Zimmer Championship Course. Evansville hopes to end its season with multiple PRs racing against one of its most competitive fields of the season.

There will be a few familiar faces for the Aces on Friday in conference teams Indiana State and Valparaiso along with local Indiana teams in Purdue, IUPUI, and Indiana. It will be a field of over 30 teams including Wright State, Dayton, Milwaukee, Kent State, Detroit Mercy, Michigan State, Akron, Youngstown State, Toledo, Ball State, Xavier (Ohio), Eastern Michigan, Green Bay, Cinncinati, Western Michigan, Michigan, Miami (Ohio), Butler, Purdue Fort Wayne, Notre Dame, Central Michigan, Cleveland State, Ohio State, Ohio, Bowling Green, Marquette, Oakland (Mich.), and hosts Wisconsin.

UE last ran two weeks ago in Nashville at the MVC Championships hosted by Belmont. Evansville’s women’s team outperformed their pre-championship poll selection finishing 11th out of 12 teams with four runners setting PRs while the men’s team finished 11 of 11 teams. The women’s side was led by freshman runner Sonja Inzinger (Mautern an der Donau, Austria) with a 38th-place finish while the men’s side was led by freshman Samuel Lea (Wooster, England) with a 59th-place finish.

While not having raced at Thomas Zimmer Championship Course in 2023, the Aces are familiar with the Great Lakes Regional site from previous years. UE ran the course in 2019 as part of the Great Lakes Regional and hopes to be back in 2024 for the NCAA Cross Country Championships. The Zimmer Championship Course offers challenging and exciting terrain for runners and elevated viewing for spectators. UW’s cross country course has an exterior loop of approximately 2,500 meters and an interior loop of 1,000 meters that cover the area’s rolling hills and valleys, while the outside loop also runs through a section of dense woods, which are aflame with color in the fall. The course is built to accommodate race distances of 4K, 5K, 6K, 8K, and 10K.

The women’s 6K will begin at 11:30 a.m. while the men’s 10K will follow at 12:30 p.m. Aces fans can follow along with Friday’s meet through PT Timing.