The Minnesota Invitational at Minneapolis tomorrow at 11 a.m. will be the first meet for the Iowa State men’s cross country team since Bill Bergan’s retirement after last season.

In Bergan’s place will be Kevin Bourke, who was an assistant under Bergan for the past 11 seasons and ran for him at ISU in the early 1980s.

Bergan took over a downtrodden Iowa State men’s cross country in 1971. He proceeded to lead the Cyclones to two NCAA team championships and 11 Big Eight championships.

Bourke said he was excited about taking over for Bergan.

“This is a great opportunity for me,” he said. “I’m fortunate to take over a program that has been as successful as it has.”

One of the runners Bourke will count on is two-time All-American Corey Ihmels. Ihmels, a senior from Williston, S.D, expressed ambivalent feelings about the upcoming Minnesota meet.

“It will be exciting because it will be coach Bourke’s first meet,” he said. “It will also be sad in a way because we will not have Coach Bergan coaching us.”

In a break with tradition Iowa State will run their top runners at the season-opening meet tomorrow.

“We are actually starting a little bit later than we normally have,” Bourke said. “Last year at this time, we already had run one meet and we did rest a number of the top seven guys to get ready for the Minnesota meet.”

The 13th-ranked Cyclones will be running up against some tough competition at Minnesota. Also entered in the field is No. 3 Wisconsin, No. 4 Northern Arizona, No. 9 Providence and No. 14 Nebraska.

“The Minnesota meet has always been a good indicator of where the team is at,” Ihmels said. “It will be a good benchmark for the rest of the season.”

For those who are looking for drastic changes from last season, Bourke said to think otherwise.

“With me being Bill’s assistant for so long, the guys are not seeing a lot of change as far as the way we are doing things,” he said.