WSU CROSS COUNTRY HOSTS ALUMNI "RUST-BUSTER" MEET
The Washington State men's and women's cross country teams are having a non-NCAA competitive opening to the 2016 season Sept. 1, hosting the WSU Intrasquad and Alumni meet at the Colfax Golf Club in Colfax, Wash...shorter distances to start the season and shake off the "rust" of summer training and accomodate more of the alumni runners...women's 4,000m race begins at 6:30 p.m. and men's 6,000m race follows at 7 p.m...meet is held at the site of the 2015 Pac-12 Cross Country Championships...WSU trains there several times a week...results will be posted at wsucougars.com, when available. 

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 Idaho cross country/track and field coaching staff starting in 2010 as an assistant to Wayne Phipps, working primarily with the distance corps...Vandals' 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 and 2007 XC team titles,and claimed the 2008 individual WAC cross country crown.

COUGAR MEN CLOSE IN ON NATIONAL RANKING
The Washington State men's cross country team received 35 points in the Aug. 30, 2016, United States Track & Field/Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Preseason Rankings, placing the Cougs at 31st as the top team in the "also receiving votes' list...Pac-12 is the most represented conference with four teams in the top 11 of the both preseason rankings...WSU returns the entire 2015 men's squad that was an at-large bid and finished 26th at the NCAA Championships...senior John Whelan, juniors Michael Williams and Sam Levora, and four 2015 freshmen - Chandler Teigen, Nathan Wadhwani, Nathan Tadesse, and Jake Finney - return to the 2016 team...Cougar men were sixth in the NCAA West Region Preseason Rankings, trailing Pac-12 teams Oregon (1), Stanford (2), and Washington (3), and Boise State (4) and Portland (5)...the WSU women's team is ranked 12th in the NCAA West Region Preseason Rankings, the seventh-best Pac-12 team in the regional rankings.