One year ago the Wabash cross country team listed winning the North Coast Athletic Conference men's title as one of its primary goals. This year the Little Giants have moved that item from a goal to an expectation.
 
The Little Giants captured the 2013 crown and have been selected as the favorite heading into the 2014 championship race Saturday.
 
Wabash received all 10 first-place votes as the favorite to win the men's race in the pre-championship coaches' poll. Allegheny was picked second with 86 total points compared to 100 for the Little Giants. Oberlin earned 83 points, good for third place. Ohio Wesleyan was selected fourth (64 points), followed by Wooster (58), DePauw (53), and Denison (44). Kenyon and Wittenberg tied for eighth place with 26 points while Hiram was picked 10^th with 10 points.
 
"Our team has put in a lot of hard work and they've been able to see the fruits of their labor in some good early season performances," Head Coach Roger Busch said. "They feel a sense of accomplishment to receive all ten first-place votes in the coaches' poll. They're pretty excited."
 
A veteran group will lead the Little Giants into Saturday's race, which will take place at 11 a.m. at Infirmary Mound Park in Granville, Ohio. Senior Billy McManus earned First Team All-NCAC honors last season with his fourth-place finish at 27:11.1 last season. Nick Boyce raced to a First Team All-NCAC award by finishing seventh overall with a time of 27:20.2). Adam Togami, Jared Burris, and Mason McKinney each earned placed on the all-conference Second Team. Togami took eight place with a time of 27:21.8. Burris crossed the line in 27:29.6 to finish ninth. McKinney also was named the Men's Newcomer of the year for his 14^th-place finish. Cordell Lewis, who is injured and not competing this season, was the fifth runner for the Little Giants and posted a 15th-place finish (21:57.7). Fabian House raced in the conference championship meet for the first time in 2013, just missing a place on the all-conference team with a 23rd-place finish (28:15.7). All with the exception of Lewis will represent Wabash again at this year's competition.
 
The Wabash team depth has been an asset all season long, and should provide the foundation this weekend to bring home the title.
 
"This is easily the most talented team we've had in recent years," Busch said. "Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the talent is more evenly distributed. Our gap times from our first-to-sixth runners have not been more than 24 seconds this year which is very hard to achieve for any program at any level. That is our strength.
 
"The 'cross your fingers' hope is that one or two of those guys will identify themselves late in the season for us to finish really high at the national championships. If we run great and one or two of our young men establish themselves as front runners for us, we can finish as high as fifth or sixth in the country. If we don't and we're a little bit off, we're back to the 15s and 20s. That's good, but we know we can do some special things this fall. We've raced hard three times and we've had three different seniors be our number-one runner. The conference meet will be a fun, controlled effort for our top kids."
 
The Little Giants moved on from the 2013 title to capture the team's first NCAA Great Lakes Regional championship, ending Calvin College's championship run of 17 season. Busch believes achieving those two goals may have actually hurt Wabash at the national championship meet.
 
"There's a certain level of physical exertion in every race. We want to come out of the weekend without being emotionally drained. We struggled with that last year because we put a big emphasis on bringing home the conference and regional titles. By the time we got to the national championship race we were somewhat exhausted --- not so much physically but definitely from an emotional aspect. It's very challenging to find that inner desire more than a couple of times a year."

Denison University serves as the host school for Saturday's event. The men's race begins at 11 a.m. followed by the women's championship race at noon. Complete meet information is available here.