This meet is the biggest event of the cross-country season.

Coach Andy Canegitta stated that, in his opinion, this was the best season in Loyola’s women’s cross-country history.

There were three runners on the women’s team and one runner from the men’s team who qualified for the meet. This is the first time Loyola has had four runners qualify for the NAIA championship meet since 2004.

The women who qualified are Francesca Vaccaro, bio-chem sophomore, Kennedi Henneberger, psychology pre-med freshman, and Annie Hills, marketing senior.

“I think on the women’s side number wise, statistically, this is probably the best team in Loyola history,” he said. “Looking back on results in the past, we’ve never had five girls under twenty minutes ever in Loyola history. And the men’s side, they ran pretty solid, the five guys we had healthy, so I would say this is one of our better seasons.”

The only runner on the men’s team to qualify was Paul Freese, history and English junior.

Freese said he was quite pleased with qualifying for nationals, despite being out with an injury for most of the season.

“It was definitely good. Obviously, I kept working while I was injured, and was lucky enough to be in good enough shape to qualify by then,” he said.

Freese seemed to be pretty excited about the competition that would be met at nationals.

“It’s probably the best competition I’ll have all year, so I really hope to go out and run a decent time,” he said.

Vaccaro said that she feels that she feels less pressure for this meet than most of the earlier meets.

“I’m excited. I feel like the pressure is kind of off, because normally you’re going into a meet trying to qualify,” he said. “But this is kind of a meet where we’re just going to run and race hard, so that will make it more fun and a different competition.”

Henneberger said she was pleasantly surprised that she was able to qualify for nationals as a freshman even though it took her a while to understand the significance of her accomplishment.

“I was really shocked when I did qualify, and I didn’t expect it to be such a big deal like everyone makes it seem,” she said. “Now that I’m going into it, I realize how much of a big deal it is and how lucky I am, to be able to qualify.”

Loyola cross-country will be traveling out to Lawrence, Kan., tomorrow, Nov. 23, for the championship meet.

Jacob Stringer can be contacted at [email protected]