Hours on the Internet and many e-mails and phone calls havebrought distance running back to Ball State -- at least for oneday.
But if Bryan Beightol's plans go well on Sunday, then thefirst-ever Midwest Collegiate Club Cross Country Championship willbe an annual event.
Clubs from Purdue, Notre Dame, Illinois, Illinois State,Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Northwestern will join theBall State Runners Association for the initial competition. The 5Kraces (one each for men and women) begin Sunday at 2 p.m. atPrairie Creek Reservoir. Beightol estimates there will be at least70 runners in both races.
Beightol, a junior who founded the Ball State RunnersAssociation in October 2004 and is president, said the group hasabout 10-15 members who come to workouts on a regular basis. Theyrun every Monday through Thursday at either 7 a.m. or 5 p.m.
At this first-ever meet, the BSRA will have two five-runnerteams in the men's race and one in the women's race.
Though Ball State had men's cross country and track programsbefore the athletics department dropped them following the2003-2004 seasons, none of those runners have joined the fledginggroup.
"We wanted to do something because we hadn't the year before,"Beightol said. "We sat on the idea for a while, and in September,we really hit it up."
Beightol looked up running clubs at large schools across theMidwest, sent out waves of e-mails and began getting responses.
Eventually, runners from eight schools committed.
"These are a bunch of guys who ran in high school," Beightolsaid. "They are pretty competitive, just not up to the collegelevel. The other teams are very active in local races in theirareas."
In securing a location, he was successful once he was finallyable to contact the people at Prarie Creek.
"I eventually I got ahold of the head grounds guy there; he wasvery helpful in getting the place set up."
Setting up the course wasn't hard, since Wapahani High Schooluses the grounds for its cross country meets.
For Beightol too, the hard part is over; now he can just run.His hopes include making the meet an annual event and to bring inmore schools next year.
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