Wabash will compete in the 2021 North Coast Athletic Conference Cross Country Championships this Saturday. The 2021 men's and women's meets will be hosted by Wittenberg University and will take place at the Clark Country Fairgrounds.
 
The Little Giants and the other conference teams are competing for the first time since Wabash hosted the Championships in 2019. The Little Giants placed second that year. Current Wabash senior Ethan Pine earned Honorable Mention All-NCAC honors after placing 21^st overall with a time of 27:11.5 over the 8,000-meter course. He followed up the conference meet with a career-best time of 26:13.6 at the 2019 NCAA DIII Great Lakes Regional Meet two weeks later to finish 119^th overall. Pine most recently led Wabash at the Oberlin Inter-Regional Rumble, placing 66^th out of 307 runners with a time of 27:13.6.
 
Fellow senior Clarke Criddell turned in a time of 28:03.04 at the Oberlin meet two weeks ago to place 120^th overall. He also ran a career-best time at the 2019 NCAA Regional meet, finishing in 26:45.5. Ian Dickey, another senior member of the team, turned in a time of 28:13.3 at the Inter-Regional Rumble to finish 137^th. He posted a career-best time earlier in the season with a 49^th-place finish at the Calvin Knight Invitational with a time of 26:40.8.
 
Two freshmen, Brayden Curnutt and Will Neubauer, have also been strong competitors for the Little Giants this season. Curnutt finished in 69^th place at Oberlin with a time of 27:19.1 two weeks after running 26:47.4 for his best time of the season at the Louisville Classic. Neubauer turned in his best time of the year at Calvin by completing the 8,000-meter race in 26:49.0 to finish 58^th overall.
 
Wabash was picked to finish fifth by the conference coaches in the 2021 pre-meet coaches' poll. DePauw was the top pick among the coaches. The Tigers received all nine first-place votes for a total of 81 points. Allegheny was picked to finish second with 71 points, followed by Denison (64 points) and Wittenberg. Wabash received 44 total points in the voting for fifth place, edging out Oberlin in sixth place with 43 points. Ohio Wesleyan (23 points), Wooster (22 points), and Kenyon (9 points) complete the coaches' pre-meet polling.
 
The 2021 NCAC Men's Championship race begins at 11 a.m.