After a well-deserved week off, the ISU women’s cross country team will travel to Minneapolis on Saturday for the Roy Griak Invitational, one of the largest meets in the country in terms of the number of teams that will attend.

This meet will be the team’s first of the season against national competition, with a number of perennial powers being represented.

“This meet is a measuring stick just where we are at among ourselves, and this will be the first 6K that all of our freshmen have raced, so that will be a new experience for them,” said coach Dick Lee. “We will also have a good idea of where we sit within the conference because there are several conference schools that are running there.”

There are a total of six teams in this meet that are ranked in the top 30 nationally, according to the U. S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association poll released Sept. 12. These include No. 9 Baylor, No. 13 Arizona State, No. 18 Marquette, No. 23 Michigan State and No. 26 Virginia. Also included is No. 16 Minnesota, the host of the meet.

The Cyclone team finished 28th out of the 31 teams that competed in this meet last year, but senior Jenny Mockler said she thinks the team can finish in the top half of the meet this year.

“In the past, we have come in the lower half of that meet,” Mockler said. “I think we have a really good team this year and we have the potential to be in the top half of the teams.”

Lee said the team is going into this meet mostly healthy.

“We are looking forward to going up there and having a good meet,” Lee said.

Before their week off, the Cyclones dominated several teams from around their region in their first two meets, placing five in the top 15 at the Drake Fall Classic and four in the top eight in the ISU Open.

Lee said the team tries to schedule meets every other week as much as possible.

“It gives a chance to get a hard week of work in and then also back off a week [before] going into a big meet,” Lee said. “We should be a little bit more rested going into this weekend – and better conditioned – than two weeks ago just because we have had two more weeks of practice.”

Freshman Kelsey Bulat won at Drake and finished second at the ISU Open, just behind sophomore teammate Lisa Koll.

Koll, the reigning Big 12 Conference runner of the week, said she was surprised when she found out that she had won the award.

“It gives me more confidence to realize that what I’m doing is being recognized as competitive within the Big 12,” Koll said.