For the second consecutive season, the Cyclone men’s cross country team has qualified for a trip to the National Championship meet Nov. 24 in Terra Haute, Ind.

Head coach Corey Ihmels said he likes the direction the program has taken in the last couple of years and uses championship berths as a measuring stick when judging its progress.

“I think we’re moving in the right direction,” Ihmels said. “I think, for the guys, it’s an expectation now. We expect to go every year, and we went into this season with that being the goal.”

The men missed out on one of the 18 automatic qualifying spots from the Regional events, but made the 31-team Championship field thanks to an NCAA selection committee that set the field Sunday. Ihmels said he had hoped the team could have qualified automatically to avoid some of the selection day suspense.

“We’re excited to get through and get to Nationals. I don’t think we ran great on Saturday, but we ran well enough to get through,” Ihmels said. “We trained pretty hard in the 10 days prior to Regionals, and I think we had a little fatigue in our legs on Saturday.”

Last season, the ISU men struggled to a thirtieth-place finish in the 31-team field at Nationals. Then-junior Kiel Uhl was the top finisher for the Cyclones, finishing seventy-first. Early in the race Uhl got caught in traffic, lost his balance and fell, but still managed to finish in the top half of the race.

National No. 1 Oregon and No. 2 Oklahoma State will lead the field into Terra Haute next week. The Pac-10 Conference is sending the most teams, with five, while the Big 12 will send four — Iowa State, Texas A&M, Colorado and Oklahoma State. Garett Jeffries, from Missouri, and Jake Morse, from Texas, were individual qualifiers from the Big 12.

Junior Guor Marial has led the Cyclones with two of his best finishes of the season in the Big 12 Championship and the NCAA Regional meet on Saturday. In both races, Marial was the first Cyclone to cross the line, finishing just seconds ahead of senior Uhl.

“Guor has been a leader since he’s been here,” Ihmels said. “Obviously, it took him a couple of years to get to where he is today. Week in and week out, he’s been really consistent for us.”

The No. 21 Cyclones will have had just eight days of preparation going into Nationals. Not only do they need the time to prepare for the season’s biggest race, but to recoup after the season’s longest race thus far.

The team will use the early part of the week to get their legs back before beginning to prepare for Nationals mid-week.

“We’re going to freshen up a little bit. We need to get recovered from Saturday’s race,” Ihmels said. “After the 10k, it’ll take a couple extra days to get recovered.

“We’ll have a good solid workout mid-week, and then get ready to roll for Monday.”