NCAA WEST REGION XC CHAMPIONSHIPS NOV. 11
Washington State women's team and No. 17 men's team compete at the NCAA West Region Cross Country Championships Friday, Nov. 11, at the Haggin Oaks Golf Course in Sacramento...all Pac-12 schools compete except for 2016 champions, Colorado teams which compete in the Mountain Region...other West schools come from Big West, Big Sky, and West Coast Conferences...women's 6,000m race begins at 11 a.m...men's 10,000m race begins at Noon...schools can enter up to 10 runners per gender but only the top five count in team scoring (by place) with lowest team score winning.

WAYNE PHIPPS, DIRECTOR  WSU CROSS COUNTRY/TRACK & FIELD
Wayne Phipps (University of British Columbia '91) begins his third season with the Washington State cross country program...he became the 15th men's coach and the second coach for the combined men's and women's program at WSU on July 1, 2014, after 19 years at the University of Idaho...Phipps led the 2015 Cougar men's program to a sixth-place finish at the Pac-12 Championships, a fourth-place finish at the NCAA West Regionals, and an at-large berth to finish 26th out of 31 teams at the NCAA Championships...during the 2016 Track & Field season, a pair of Cougs earned second-team All-America honors...Cougars tallied 25 new entries into the WSU all-time top ten records...while at Idaho, Phipps was honored 14 times as a conference coach of the year and led the Vandals to a record 16 total conference titles.

ALLIX POTRATZ-LEE, ASSISTANT COACH
Allix Potratz-Lee joined the WSU track and field coaching staff in July 2014 after an outstanding career as a student-athlete and coach at the University of Idaho...member of the cross country/track and field coaching staff in 2010 as an assistant to Wayne Phipps, working with the distance corps...women's cross country team won WAC team titles in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.. she was a five-time WAC champion, a 10-time first-team all-WAC honoree and a two-time ESPN/CoSIDA Academic All-American...she helped Idaho cross country capture the 2005, 2007 XC team titles, and claimed the 2008 individual WAC cross country crown.

COUGARS IN THE NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
The WSU men's cross country team finished in fifth-place finish at the Pac-12 Championships and is ranked 17th in the latest U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Week 6 Nov. 1 national poll...the WSU men are also ranked 18th in the Oct. 30 Flotrack Saucony Flo50 ranking...the highest 2016 ranking for the Cougar men was 15th in the Oct. 18 poll...historically, WSU's men's cross country team has been ranked as high as 10th in the preseason poll of 1998 when the Cougars placed 18th at the NCAA Championships...more recently, WSU was ranked 20th for two weeks in 2009 and fell to 27th at the end of that season but finished 21st at the NCAA Championships...WSU was ranked 25th in 2015 Week 7, the first national ranking under Coach Phipps...WSU was an at-large team at the NCAA Championships where the Cougar men finished 26th out of 31 teams.