Come Saturday, senior cross country runner Elizabeth Boyle hopes to add a missing piece to her season.

“I feel like I still haven’t had that one great race that you kind of hope to have every season,” Boyle said. “So I’m hoping that maybe (it’s) this week.”

Boyle, along with seven of her teammates, will compete at the NCAA Midwest Regional Championships in Springfield, Mo.

From the 33-team field, the top two teams will receive an automatic bid to nationals on Nov. 23. Four teams enter the race nationally ranked in the top 30, including No. 13 Illinois, which feels confident about its chances in finishing in the top two.

“We should definitely be one of the top two teams,” Boyle said. “But Minnesota is obviously good competition. We have to run well, but there’s not a overwhelming amount of pressure.”

No. 17 Minnesota, along with No. 18 Iowa State and No. 30 Iowa, will probably pose the biggest competition for the Illini.

Even if the Illini don’t finish in the top two, they can still be picked by the NCAA selection committee as one of the 13 at-large teams to race at nationals. In most of the races this season that counted toward nationals, the Illini were among the top finishers, so they have no reason to doubt that this weekend won’t be their last race.

Confident that his team will finish in the top two, cross country coach Jeremy Rasmussen said he is also looking for the race to add momentum for nationals.

(“We’re looking) to hopefully walk away from the course feeling confident in how we ran and still know that we have something left for nationals nine days later,” Rasmussen said.

Seniors Angela Bizzarri and Boyle, junior Chantelle Groenewoud and sophomore Kristin Sutherland are among Illinois’ top four runners. At the Big Ten Championships on Nov. 1, when Illinois finished second, all four received all-Big Ten honors, a first in the program’s history.

The four look to lead the Orange and Blue pack, and Rasmussen said they just have to continue to stay healthy for the next few weeks.

“Obviously they’re in really good shape, obviously they know how to race and obviously they’re really competitive individuals,” Rasmussen said.

But one issue that surrounds the team is searching for a fifth runner who has a real solid finish.

A 31-place gap between Illinois’ fourth and fifth runners at the Big Ten Championships left the Illini six points away from a first-place finish and just three points ahead of the third-place finisher.

For the Illini to improve in that area, they must see progress from senior Theresa Brokaw, juniors Jamie Brusa and Ashley Thompson and sophomore Danelle Woods.

“Right now, the goal is to work together and move forward, and as a group we can make up that missing spot,” Woods said.