STILLWATER, Okla. – Utah State's men's cross country team is headed to the Sooner State for the NCAA Division I NCAA Championships on Saturday, Nov. 19, on the Greiner Family OSU Cross Country Course.
 
Two Aggies on the women's side will also be competing in senior Mica Rivera and sophomore Ana Weaver.
 
"The expectations for my last cross country race is to compete and have fun," Rivera said. "It's hard to get to the NCAAs, so I am just going to embrace the opportunity and really enjoy it with my teammate, Ana. I feel super blessed to have this opportunity."
 
The women's 6K championship race is scheduled to begin at 8:20 a.m. (MT), with the men's 10K following at 9:10 a.m. The meet will be televised on ESPNU, and live results will be available here.
 
This is just the fourth time in program history, and first since 2020, that the Aggie men have been selected to participate in the NCAA Division I National Championships. They earned an at-large bid this year after finishing seventh in the Mountain Region Championships last weekend in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
 
"It's a phenomenal accomplishment," said Utah State head coach Artie Gulden said. "When I took over the program, neither the men's team or women's team had ever qualified for the NCAA Championships, so that was the goal that we put forward, the vision of the program to all of the kids at the time. A short time later, in 2017, we had both teams qualify, and now this is the fourth time the men have qualified.
 
"For them to make it, and overcome that adversity, just makes it that much more gratifying."
 
Scheduled to compete for the Aggie men include grad senior Darren Harman, seniors Mark Crandall, Caleb Garnica and Camren Todd, juniors Yonas Mogos and Max Wehrli, and sophomore Brennan Benson.
 
The alternate runners for Utah State will be seniors Bridger Altice and Devin Pancake, and junior Spencer Nelson.
 
"Our expectations are to place as well as we can," Harman said. "We got in under some very unique circumstances and that was our goal for the season, to qualify. Putting ourselves in position, executing the race plan and following what the coaches want us to do will set us up to have the best race possible."
 
In their first-ever appearnace at the NCAA Championships, the Aggies, ranked No. 27 at the time, took 27th out of 31 teams with 603 points – despite having three runners go down early in the 10k race – in 2017, in Louisville, Kentucky.
 
Two years later, Utah State scored 428 points to place 16th overall and finish ahead of five teams that entered the race ranked above it (No. 14 Wisconsin, No. 11 Washington, No. 9 Ole Miss, No. 18 Syracuse and No. 13 Middle Tennessee State).
 
Garnica placed 99th with a time of 32:06.3.
 
Utah State earned its best-ever finish at the 2020 NCAA Championships, which also took place in Stillwater. The 21st-ranked Aggies scored 351 points to place 11th overall, surpassing their previous best championship finish of 16th in 2019. Utah State beat 15 ranked teams, including 10 that were ranked ahead of them.
 
Garnica crossed the finish line in 30:31.2 to place 28th and earn All-American status (given to the top 40 finishers). Todd narrowly missed giving Utah State a pair of All-Americans as he placed 42nd with a time of 30:50.2. Altice (31:35.6) finished 108th, while Nelson (32:05.5), Harman (32:20.5) and Crandall (32:29.6) rounded out the Aggies finishers, placing 138th, 161st and 176th, respectively.
 
"Heading into the race this weekend, it's just a lot of gratitude that I have for the time and the friends that I've made along the way, the time that I've had here, and being so grateful for all the opportunities and experiences that I've been able to have," said Harman, when asked about his final race as an Aggie. "The race will just be a culmination of having some fun and looking back and remembering about what got me here, and the journey I had along the way."
 
For more information on the Utah State track & field/cross country programs, follow the Aggies on Twitter at @USUTF_XC, on Facebook at USUTrack and on Instagram at USUTF_XC.
 
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