This weekend, the NCAA National Cross Country Championship will be vastly different from any race Georgetown’s men’s cross country team has run so far this season. As the nation’s top 31 teams toe the line, the Hoyas will not be able to dictate the race pace as they have all season. Instead they will be dispersed amongst the other 248 elite runners from around the nation.

Georgetown’s men’s cross country team has competed in three meets thus far this season, winning both the individual and team titles all three times.

BRONX, N.Y., Oct. 31 —Andrew Bumbalough was all smiles as he surged down the final 200 meters, sensing that he was soon to be the Big East individual champion. As the red-shirt junior crossed the finish line in 23:55, he dropped his hands to his knees and tried to catch his breath, having just run the second-fastest time in course history.

Football: Georgetown Falls to League Foe

A 13-7 first quarter lead gave the Hoyas (1-7, 0-4 Patriot League) hope for their first win since September, but four unanswered touchdowns by the Lehigh Mountain Hawks (3-5, 2-1) handed the Blue and Gray a 33-13 defeat, their seventh loss in a row.

The Georgetown women’s cross country team lined up at the NCAA Pre-Nationals this past weekend at Indiana State University in almost the same scenario as the year before. Faced with maybe the toughest region in the nation, the team needed to knock off several ranked teams in order to secure a better chance for an at-large bid to the National meet, which stands a little more than a month away.

While the outbreak of norovirus on campus this past week postponed many sporting events over the weekend, the men’s and women’s cross country teams had one-third of their regular season cancelled in one fell swoop as the Notre Dame Invitational and the Mason Invitational continued without the Hoyas.

NCAA cross country pundits will agree that you cannot look too deeply into early season meets. Often teams view the low-key races just as exaggerated workouts and hold out top runners, preferring to save full efforts for bigger meets down the road.

For Georgetown’s men’s and women’s cross country teams, last year’s NCAA Championship was not the finale to the great season that it was supposed to be.