The Illinois men’s cross country team will compete Saturday at pre-nationals, one of the premier cross country races behind nationals, in Terre Haute, Ind.

Many of the top teams in the country will be in attendance including Stanford, Michigan, Iowa, Michigan State, Notre Dame and BYU.

“Just about every top team in the nation except Wisconsin will be at the meet,” said sophomore Trent Hoerr.

The Illini, who received an honorable mention in preseason polls, dropped out of the rankings after their first meet.

With a strong showing in this meet, the team could return to the rankings.

With all the competition, this meet will also give the team a sense of where it is at for nationals.

“This meet is pretty important to us,” said junior Jason Bill. “We need this to establish ourselves, see how we’re doing as a team and see if we have a chance of getting to nationals.”

The race is eight kilometers – roughly five miles – long.

Going into such a big meet, the team has set some goals for itself.

“Hopefully, our whole pack can run together as a team,” Bill said. “Our goal is to have the whole team run well and beat some good teams.”

Because it is a highly competitive meet, only nine of the team’s 19 runners will race Saturday.

The team is relatively healthy aside from freshman Dan Stock, who has recently suffered from heat exhaustion and is taking the meet off to recover.

“We all have to run well,” Hoerr said. “Our goal is to have our top five runners under 25 minutes.”