The Normal West cross country team will be traveling to Metamora on Saturday, to begin their run in the 2017 IHSA cross country state series. They will be running against 9 other teams: Bloomington, Champaign Central, East Peoria, Lincoln, Mahomet Seymour, Metamora, Morton, U-High, and Washington High School.

The top 6 teams will advance to the Sectional meet on Saturday, October 28th at Maxwell Park. The Wildcat boys claimed second behind Bloomington in the conference meet on October 14th. The West girls side earned third place in the Big 12.

Sophomore Charlie Wetzel, who individually won the conference championship meet last Saturday, has high hopes for his team this season,”I am very confident we will go to the state meet as a team this year, Normal West hasn’t made a state trip in a very long time, and I think this year may be the year,”said Wetzel.

The West coaches have been lightening the workload for the team this week. “As coaches, it’s our job to make sure our athletes have enough energy to compete to their full potential,”said second-year coach Chad Aubin.”By allowing them to taper, they should be completely ready to go for regionals.”

“We don’t doubt for a second that both teams(boys and girls) will advance to sectionals.,”said coach Megan Starkey.”There is a lot of good competition in our regional this year, but we still expect our runners to give their best on the course.”

This is also Coach Starkey’s second year coaching at Normal West. In both of these coach’s first year last year, the boys team and girls team advanced to the sectional meet.