Julian Avila is thrilled to be running in the NAIA Men's Cross Country National Championship - the perfect way to end his senior year.
Avila is equally happy to have a Kansas Wesleyan entourage making the trip to Columbia, Missouri, with him and his teammates after they qualified by placing second in the Kansas Conference Championship on Nov. 9 in Leavenworth.
The Coyote men will be accompanied by the women's team, which likewise finished second in their conference championship. It's the first time in school history both the men's and women's team have qualified for the NAIA cross-country meet in the same season.
"It's awesome," said Avila, who finished 11th in the KCAC and competed in last year's NAIA Championship. "I got here and Kansas Wesleyan wasn't one of those top schools. Last year it was a men's team and a few (female) individuals.
"This year it's both men and women, and I think that's awesome because the women have been working just as hard as the men, and they deserve an opportunity to prove themselves."
For Avila, nothing tops ending the season and your career while competing with and supporting your close friends.
"It's fun, it's a bigger group, and it's a really fun group," he said. "It's a better environment and it makes it a lot easier. We're a big family, so it's awesome having them cheer us on, and then when we're done racing, we make sure that we do the same for them."
Third-year coach Garrett Young concurs.
"It's historic," he said. "I think it's just a culmination of the timing. You have two really great groups of athletes on both the men's and women's sides and just to be able to have them all at the university at the same time I don't think is coincidence. They really came together to accomplish something this year, and we're excited to see where it can take them."
The 8-kilometer race will be Nov. 22 at Gans Creek Cross Country Course, starting at 10:30 a.m. The No. 18-ranked Coyotes will be joined by 35 other teams and 80 individual runners.
KWU finished 14th in last year's championship and was led by then-freshman Damion Jackson, who earned All-America honors by placing 14th (23:38.4). He was in the KCAC race this year.
"He was better at the conference meet heading into this than he did last year and in the workouts since," Young said. "Damion, more or less, was our number one almost every meet last year, and I think he's only been our number one once this season. A lot of credit is due to Austin Hess and Julian Avila, who have shown substantial improvements in the past 12 months.
"I think we have a lot better depth this year. Last year, we were trying to get our fifth man under 26 minutes for the 8K distance. This year, we ended up having eight or nine different guys achieve that mark. I do truly think we have three men legitimately in the hunt for an All-American finish."
Hess finished fourth in the KCAC, while Giovanni Rios, who also competed in last year's NAIA Championship, was 12th. Brenden Ellis placed 13th and Jake Cruz 18th. Austin Schaeffer, a transfer from Cowley Community College, will join the lineup in Columbia; he competed in the NJCAA National Championship last fall.
The Gans Creek Course is not an unknown commodity to the Coyotes. They ran in the Brian T. Simpson Invitational on Oct. 22, finishing third out of 14 teams.
"We know it's fast. It's a bit long, but we know what the course looks like and we're comfortable with it being flat," Avila said.
Avila says he won't do anything different at nationals than he has done all year.
"I like to shut my mind off - I just don't think about anything. I just go and run, because I feel like when you start thinking about a lot of stuff, you start stressing. You start looking down at your watch and you see the paces and it just becomes too much," he said.
"I like to run with a group of people, kind of focus on placement more than time. At the end of the day, I know that when I get to the last mile again, it's one of those mindset things - I'm not going to let anybody pass me."
Avila said there is extra motivation for him and his cohorts.
"I personally don't like to focus on rankings very much, but I don't think we're ranked as high as we should be," he said. "I think we're running with a chip on our shoulder. That and just trusting in everything that we've done and all the experience that we have is going to help us go out there and do well."
Young likes the team's chances.