The Great Lakes Challenge is getting bigger and better.
This week the cross country event hosted by Aquinas College will welcome 53 teams from around the country including some from Montana.
"It's so special for us because this is our home course at Aquinas and especially this time of year being all the fall colors," Saints senior runner Zoe Antel said. "I love this course. It's probably one of the fastest that we run being completely flat and being able to run it with my teammates."
Riverside Park will host the meet on Saturday morning giving Aquinas the chance to show off its home course to some of the best in the country.
"The course is really fast," Saints senior runner Ben Peterson said. "There's not a hill on it. It's looped so you can see it really well. Top ranked teams from all around the country come here, so it's really good for them to go head-to-head and compete against each other for better rankings."
Aquinas men's and women's team are both ranked nationally and hope to put on a good showing this weekend.
"Based on what we've done this year, we've had a really good progression of improving from August to now," Saints head coach Mike Wojciakowski said. "With all these top teams coming in here, it's just hard to figure out where you fit against all of them as they're coming in, but in the top five in the event would be a great placing for both teams."
