MARSHALL, Minn. - The Southwest Minnesota State University women's and men's cross-country teams return to action this Saturday competing at the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference Championships in Wayne, Neb.
 
The races will take place at the Wayne Country Club with the men's 8,000-meter race starting at 11 a.m., followed by the women's 6,000-meter race at 12 p.m. The women's race will have 16 teams competing while 14 teams will run in the men's race.
 
SMSU fourth-year head coach Kirk Nauman expects to have six athletes compete in the men's race and nine athletes run in the women's race.
 
At the 2021 NSIC Championships, the Mustang women finished 14^th out of 16 teams with 426 points, while the men's team finished 13^th out of 14 with 380 points.
 
Augustana won both the women's and men's 2021 NSIC championship also held in Wayne, Neb.
 
A new men's individual champion will be crowned this season as the reigning champion Austin Miller of Augustana graduated. Augustana enters the championship ranked 15th in the latest USTFCCCA Poll, while the Vikings (4th), Sioux Falls (7th), Minnesota State (9th) and Minnesota Duluth (10th) are ranked in the Central Region. 
 
Winona State's Lindsay Cunningham will look to repeat as the women's champion.  Cunningham ran away from the field as a freshman, winning by nearly 20 seconds.  She has yet to lose a regular season race in her career, as she was also region champion and placed seventh in the nation a year ago. Augustana is ranked fifth in the nation, while Minnesota Duluth (14th), Minnesota State (16), Winona State (17) are also ranked nationally.