FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas’ men’s team is ranked No. 8 going into Saturday’s NCAA Cross Country Championships in Louisville, Ky., but Coach Chris Bucknam said the Razorbacks are shooting higher than that.
“I said at the beginning of the year we want to get back into the national conversation with our cross country team,” Bucknam said. “We’ve been out of it for a year or two.
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“We want to improve on what we’ve done in the past, which is a couple of 10thplace finishes.”
Bucknam led Arkansas to the 2013 NCAA indoor track title and has two second-place finishes in track and 12 overall in the top 10, but the best cross country finishes since he arrived in 2008 were 10th in 2010 and 2012.
Putting together a roster that can field nationally competitive teams in country and indoor and outdoor track, Bucknam said, is a challenging balancing act.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow in that it’s in our DNA that we’re trying to win an outdoor track championship and are walking a fine line, but there are no excuses,” he said. “We want our cross country team to vie for a championship, too.”
Bucknam said he likes the fact that five Razorbacks — Alex George, Austen Dalquist, Franklin Tonui, Christian Heymsfield and Gabe Gonzalez — have taken turns finishing first on the team at major meets this season.
“This group is really special to coach because there are no egos on this team,” he said. “It’s a badge of honor for our guys to see someone different finish in our top position every single race that we’ve run.”