Wrapping up last season with a seventh-place finish at the NCAA Atlantic Regional Championship, the men’s cross country team remains poised to push even further this season with the return of an experienced squad.

Despite losing four seniors, the team’s roster contains six seasoned seniors, including captain Curt Bell, who had the honor of representing Ithaca College at the NCAA National Championships last season. This depth should play a significant role in the success of the team, in addition to absorbing the loss of two of their top-tier runners.

“They were really good seniors both running- and leadershipwise,” Bell said. “But I think we have a pretty big senior class this year, and last year’s success will definitely push us.”

As the reigning Empire 8 Champions and third-place finishers at the New York State Collegiate Track Championships, the team definitely wants to replicate that success. But the runners still view the NCAA National Championship as the ultimate goal.

“You have to be successful at the conference level before you can take the next step,” Head Coach Jim Nichols said. “Our region is one of the toughest in the country. So, if we can be competitive in our region, we can compete on the national level.”

But the team might need more than just talented upperclassmen to make a run at nationals, as they do have ample talent up and down the roster.

“It definitely helps to have strong upperclassmen, just experiencewise,” senior Scott Walker said. “But I think we can easily rely on younger guys. We have strong underclassmen.”

Having that developing talent to complement the experienced depth at the top should help ease the grind of the season, while also encouraging healthy competition and pushing everyone to do that little bit more.

“This is a very strong year,” Nichols said. “We had the most athletes we’ve ever had try out for cross country this year. It’s a large group of freshmen, and there’s a lot of talent throughout the program. We’ve got a lot of people, and it’s going to be a competitive year.”

With last year’s seventh-place finish at NCAA Regional Championship still in the back of the team’s mind, Bell believes that everyone on the team is committed to doing whatever needs to be done on their part for the team to advance.

“Every single year, we’re just on the outside — we’re just so close,” Bell said. “Everyone’s just sick of being in that position on the outside looking in. Guys are willing to do the extra morning run there or the extra interval there to know that it increases our chances of getting to nationals.”

As the season gets underway with the annual Janette Bonrouhi-Zakaim Memorial Alumni Run, Nichols has his mind set on staying competitive throughout the season and on getting the most out of each individual race.

“I hope we’re competitive,” Nichols said. “I believe we’re competitive, and our goal is to be competitive. If we get beat, we get beat. But if we do our best, that’s winning in a sense.”