CORVALLIS, Ore. – The 2021 Cascade Collegiate Conference Men’s Cross Country Championship, presented by U.S. Bank, takes place at the Running Y Ranch in Klamath Falls, Ore., on Friday.
Oregon Tech hosts the 8K, which is set to begin at 11 a.m. Pacific, with 10 teams competing for not only the CCC Championship, but also the conference’s automatic qualifier to the NAIA Cross Country Championship on Nov. 19 in Vancouver, Wash. At-large bids will be announced on Nov. 9 by the NAIA office.
The top-15 runners will earn All-Cascade Collegiate Conference honors, with the possibility of qualifying for the NAIA Championship Meet as an at-large individual if their team doesn’t qualify.
Live results can be found here: https://live.athletictiming.net/meets/11734. Check out the
CCC Cross Country Championship Page.
The race is bound for some excitement as half the teams competing enter the race ranked in the latest NAIA Men’s Cross Country Poll.
No. 8-ranked Southern Oregon University – which opted out of the 2020 season – looks to grab its 13
th CCC title. The Raiders have yet to finish outside of the top-three this year, including two first-place finishes, and hope to defy their third-place preseason prediction.
No. 12-ranked Lewis-Clark State College, which was picked to win its second-straight CCC title, also has had a strong year with a win at the Eastern Oregon University Invitational. The Warriors won last year’s championship in their first year as a full member of the CCC.
Fifteenth-ranked Oregon Tech was picked to finish second prior to the season starting and already have a win at the Running Y Ranch under its belt. The Owls took five of the top-six spots to win by a landslide over fellow CCC teams.
No. 20-ranked EOU looks to challenge SOU for the race to 13 CCC titles. The Mounties took third at their invitational and look to overcome a sixth-place prediction from the preseason poll.
Rounding out the ranked teams is No. 24-ranked Northwest University, which was predicted to take fifth in the preseason poll. The Eagles have two second-place finishes this year and took third at the 2020 CCC Championship.
Also competing for the championship are Corban University, College of Idaho, Bushnell University, Multnomah University, and Walla Walla University.