Both men’s and women’s cross country teams finished in the top ten at NCAA Pre-Nationals at Lavern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course in Terre Haute, Ind.

The N.C. State men finished fifth in the 8k race with 177 points, powered by junior Ryan Hill’s close second place finish. State was one of four teams to have four runners finish in the top-40 out of the 241 runners in the field. Hill finished second with redshirt freshman Andrew Collie finishing 16th, while redshirt senior Sandy Roberts and sophomore Matt Sonnenfeldt finished 35th and 36th respectively.

Men’s coach Rollie Geiger believes the team has some improving to do between now and the upcoming conference championships.

“We had some teams we should have beaten,” Geiger said. “We have to run better overall.”

Although there are some things the team would like to improve, Geiger sees the team stepping up to the challenge of the tough ACC competition.

“There are some really good teams in this conference,” Geiger said. “We have the pieces, we just aim forward and run better.”

The Wolfpack women finished in eighth place in the 6k women’s race with 341 points, one point ahead of ninth place Toledo. Laura Hoer led the team finishing the race in fourth place, less than a second behind Stanford’s Kathy Kroeger.

Women’s Coach Laurie Henes, while proud of the team that ran three true freshmen, is looking forward to the future of the team. “We ended up close to where we want to be but we have some things we have to improve on,” said coach Henes.

Freshman Laura Hoer led the team finishing in fourth place, less than a second behind Stanford’s Kathy Kroeger. Hoer stayed with the leaders the entire race even when the frontrunners began to pull away.

“Laura was amazing,” said coach Henes. “A true freshman in that situation, to come back up to the leaders at the end, she did a great job.”

Junior Andie Cozzarelli also had an impressive performance, finishing in 37th place.

“That was huge step up for her,” Henes said. “She was a really big help for us.”

Both teams will shift their focus to the ACC Championships in Boston, Mass., on Oct. 30. The teams will turn back the intensity and go into slightly lighter training cycles. “We really had a really big load the last few weeks so we’ll have to pull it back a bit,” Geiger said. “So we can get our legs back under us for conference.”

The women’s team will also decrease the training load.

“We plan to change up some things in this cycle, the mileage has been pretty high,” Henes said.