Photo courtesy of Michigan Tech University The Michigan Tech men’s cross country team, which features Sam Lange, Colman Lenci, Tucker Ringhand, Michael Dennis, Callen Carrier, Michael Marshall and Zeb Swager, along with coaches Luke Moore (left) and Robert Young (right), are heading to the NCAA DII Cross Country Championships Saturday in Sacramento, California.

By DAVER KARNOSKY

dkarnosky@mininggazette.com

HOUGHTON — With a third-place finish in Romeoville, Illinois, on Nov. 9, the Michigan Tech men’s cross country team earned an automatic qualifier spot for the NCAA DII Cross Country Championships this weekend in Sacramento, California. The Huskies, who are ranked No 22 nationally, have been going to the national championships in recent years, but this year, they earned that coveted automatic spot, which another step in the right direction for the program.

“That felt really good,” said Huskies coach Robert Young. “I mean, any time, or any way, you make nationals always feels good. But, having a team automatically qualify is really fun because you get to celebrate there with them right away. You get that real good feeling, so that was pretty special.”

Making the national championships was great, but for Young, how the Huskies did it meant even more.

“How they went about doing that made me feel really good as a coach, because we’ve been focused on ourselves, and getting our process right, and executing our race plan, running our best, and letting the chips fall where they may,” he said. “If you look at the splits, and our team’s movement through the field in that regional race, it was like a near ideal execution of doing that, of just running our best race, and we’ll be there. They did a great job of it.

“At our first split, we were in 12th, and we were like, 12th, ninth, seventh, fifth, fourth, third. We were just the inevitable force that just kept coming, and it was pretty fun to be a part of.”

Young and his staff, which includes assistant coach Luke Moore and graduate assistants Clayton Sayen, Karah McElhone and Wesley Beck and volunteer assistant Dylan Gaines, have asked the Huskies to focus in a specific way as they prepare each week, and the runners have obliged.

“We’ve charged our team with being particularly intentional about their training, and their lifestyles, and then also charged them with being persistent, purposefully, intentionally competitive as well,” said Young. “Truly, when we say competitive, we’re talking about the heart of the word, bringing your absolute best self at the appropriate times. This group has embraced that to a different degree than a lot of teams do. They’ve been very disciplined in trusting the training process that we’ve been doing, which actually really helps with our ability to get it right. Because, when we know what they’ve done, and they’ve done in a particular way, then it’s easy to calibrate that next step to help us grow maximally. So this group has done that extremely well.”

“Then they have embraced the opportunities to compete and get the most of themselves, and put all of their eggs in the baskets that matter, and it’s easy. This group has embraced the idea of being intentional with their training, so that when we go to race, and when we go to compete, the best is available to us, and then we go out there to bring out the new normal, as we call it. We do all these things to make running that fast normal, and we just show up with our normal, and our normal tends to be pretty special.”

The Huskies have been building to this moment since the days when Moore and Sayen were competitors.

“It’s cool to see a team take the best things from the past, keep them alive, and keep some of those traditions alive while also finding their own identity and making their own new version of it from one year to the next,” Young said. “This group has essentially taken those keys, those important pieces from the past, and added this intentionality layer to it. If the next group takes the past, plus his intentionality layer, then we can actually take another step, that gradual build through time.

“Those past teams were so important, because it helps when athletes can see themselves at nationals. We’ve been in nationals several times, so, of course, the team, if it runs well, will go to nationals, and then it’s normal to be there. So now it’s just a matter of, ‘OK, can we get our best coming out there?’ So, there’s this snowball effect of being there helps us be there again, better next time.”

Young loves the makeup of his team.

“Honestly, it’s a great group of people to work with,” he said. “My favorite part is just working with them as people. There’s some special human beings among this group, and it’s cool that we get to work with them as runners, but I think they (the coaching staff) could be honored and excited to work with them in any capacity.

“I just like being around them. They’re weird and unique and nerdy and special. One of the things I love about our team is everyone is just themselves, and they just get to be authentic. Part of that, they love when each other are authentic, and just around each other. So, everyone is just comfortable and doing the thing that they love to do, while also just being their own unique self.”

The Huskies are paced by senior Sam Lange. Freshman Colman Lenci, juniors Tucker Ringhand, Michael Dennis, and Callen Carrier are all contributors as well, along with others.