Aside from the national cross country championship race, Saturday’s Pre-Meet cross country race in Greenville, S.C., will set the largest racing scene of the season for the men’s cross country team.

“This is the toughest competition we’ll face all year besides the national meet,” senior Jason Bialka said. “This is a good gauge to see how we match up with teams in our region, like Minnesota and Nebraska.”

Because of the large number of teams in this meet, the men’s division will be divided into two 8K races, a black race and a gold race, with 37 teams in each race. Among the 37 teams, 14 nationally ranked teams will compete in the black race while 12 national teams will be featured in the gold race.

Eastern’s men’s squad has been placed in the black race with No. 2 Stanford, No. 8 Northern Arizona, No. 9 North Carolina State and No. 11 Colorado State. Both Minnesota and Nebraska will also take the course with the Panthers.

“They’ve split the races in half, but everyone still has a chance to race with some good teams,” head coach John McInerney said.

In the gold race, No. 1 Colorado will race against No. 5 Notre Dame and No. 9 Villanova.

The Pre-Meet course at Furman University will again be the site of the NCAA Championship race Nov. 19. Following these four men’s and women’s races, 30 additional men’s and women’s teams who registered for this weekend’s race but were not accepted into the Pre-Meet will race at the Furman Invitational.

With the tough competition from across the nation gathered in one large field of battle, keeping an eye on teammates throughout the race is a concern of the Panthers.

“When you have a race with top quality runners, they go out fast,” Bialka said. “It’s good they’re breaking it up into two races, but there’s still over 30 teams. It’s important that we get out quicker because you don’t want to get trapped. Hopefully we’ll be able to find each other. It’s much easier to run with a teammate.”

With 37 teams in the field, and each team racing seven men, over 250 runners will be swarmed around the starting line.

“We really just talked about having our own races,” McInerney said. “We’ve had pretty solid practices. Last week was a real good practice week and we accomplished what we wanted to last weekend on the regional course at Southern.”

Aside from the team aspect, several All-American runners will be leading the pack this weekend who are favored to dominate the national race next month. Both Bialka and teammate Kyle O’Brien will look to keep their sights on those top runners, hopefully pulling the five other Panthers along with them.

“I’d like to try to move to the top 10,” Bialka said. “The best runners in the nation are gong to be there and several all-americans. By the end of the year I want to be in the top 30 at the national race, and to do that I have to be in the top 15 in this race.”

With Bialka and O’Brien racing close together in nearly every invite this season, Andy Derks, Eric Gruberman, Josh Vance, Adam Mariott and John Sipple round out the seven Panthers racing this weekend.

“Right now, Jason is trying to assert himself and he’s right in the hunt with everything,” McInerney said. “They’ll be some outstanding people there, and him and Kyle can both be up for a top 10 finish.”