Nov. 16, 2009

LOGAN, Utah - After placing 19th at the NCAA Mountain Regional last weekend in Albuquerque, N.M., sophomore Brian McKenna has earned an automatic spot to compete in the NCAA Division I Cross Country National Championship which will be held in Terre Haute, Ind., on Monday, Nov. 23.

Indiana State University will host the championships at the LaVern Gibson Championship Course located at the Wabash Valley Family Sports Center. The men's race will begin at approximately 12:08 p.m. Eastern time and will be broadcast live on Versus Network and streamed online via NCAA.com

McKenna earned the automatic spot after finishing the 10k regional course in 30:57.5 as he was one of the top runners to finish that was not a member of the first four teams at the regional race.

"Brian had such a great season and this is kind of like the icing on the cake for him," veteran USU head coach Gregg Gensel said. "It is the reward he gets after having such a great season."

McKenna is the first Aggie to qualify for the NCAA cross country championships since Trevor Ball and Tiffany Strickland did so during the 2005 season. Ball went on to earn All-American honors that year.

"I am excited for nationals," McKenna said. "We hoped to get there as a team but I am setting my goals high and going to do my best. I just really want to beat some of the guys that beat me at regionals. I have beaten them before."

Thirty-one teams were selected to participate in the National Championships. The top two teams automatically qualified from each of the nine regions, for a total of 18 teams. Brigham Young and Colorado were the two teams from the Mountain Region. Thirteen additional teams were selected at-large and 38 individuals were selected to participate in the championship through an automatic qualifier and at-large selection process. All individual qualifiers finished in the top 25 in their region.

"It is going to be a lot of fun." Gensel said. "He is really excited and we are really excited for him."