The US collegiate cross country season began in earnest on the last week of September and less than two months later it is almost over.

From the team perspective, the aim is to qualify for the NCAA Championships. For teams that have little chance of reaching that ambitious goal, winning their conference meets, most of which are held on the last weekend in October is often the coach's quest.

Collegiate teams and individuals will qualify for the NCAA Cross Country Championships at one of nine regional races held on Saturday, 12th November. The NCAA cross country regions along with the 2005 competition site are: Great Lakes hosted by Indiana University at the Indiana Cross Country Course in Bloomington, Indiana; Mid-Atlantic hosted by Lehigh University at the Goodman Campus Cross County Course in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Midwest hosted by the University of Iowa at the Iowa Cross Country Course in Iowa City, Iowa; Mountain hosted by Brigham Young University at the East Bay Golf Course in Provo, Utah; Northeast at Boston's Franklin Park hosted by Northeastern University at Boston's Franklin Park in Boston, Massachusetts); South Central hosted by Baylor University at the Cottonwood Creek Golf Course in Waco, Texas; South hosted by the University of Florida at the University of Florida Golf Course in Gainesville, Florida; Southeast hosted by East Carolina University at Lake Kristi Park in Greenville, North Carolina and the West hosted by Stanford University at the Stanford Golf Course in Palo Alto, California. Irish Runner.com will report from the Northeast Regional.

Teams that place first or second in their Regional qualifying race automatically qualify and move on to the NCAA Championships. The Division I Men's (67th) and Women's (25th) Cross Country Championships will be hosted by Indiana State University and take place at the Wabash Valley Family Sports Center on 21st November in Terre Haute, Indiana.

The men's race distance for the qualifier and the championship is 10-kilometres while the women run a 6-kilometre course.

All is not lost if you fail to qualify automatically both teams and individuals are added to the field as at-large qualifiers.

The Championship field is consists of 255 runners. The first 126 (18 x 7) come from the top 2 teams in each Regional followed by an additional 18 runners that are the top 4 individuals that are not members of the top 2 teams. This still leaves 111 runners to be selected by the NCAA by an objective albeit convoluted and complex procedure. Thirteen more teams and 20 more individuals will percolate using a complicated formula.

To simplify it - teams that defeated teams that automatically qualified (Top 2 teams) their region during the 2005 season between (24th September - 6th November) are looked at individually and then added to the pool of qualified teams and another third place team is now measured against the 19 qualified teams and so on until 13 more teams have been selected. Next, an additional 20 individuals are chosen and the field is complete.

2005 NCAA Cross Country Championships