WICHITA – The Wichita State men's and women's cross country teams race in their first of four regular-season meets at the 74^th annual JK Gold Classic at home on Saturday.
 
The men race the 6,000 meters at 8:30 a.m., followed by the women's 5,000-meter race at 9 a.m. at 4 Mile Creek Resort in Augusta, Kan.
 
"Every time we start out the year, we're just getting a little bit of a glimpse of who we really are to see if we had good summer training and are going to race well as a team," head coach Kirk Hunter said. "It's really just a snapshot of what's coming."
 
The Wichita State men return two of four all-conference runners from last season's second-place (American Athletic Conference) team and one from 2019. Bryce Merriman and Clayton Duchatschek finished 12^th and 14^th, respectively, at the 2021 AAC Championships, and the Shockers will see the return of Ben Flowers, who red-shirted the 2021 cross country season after placing seventh at the 2019 AAC Championships. The Shockers will look to some younger athletes to step up this season to fill the shoes of nonreturners.
 
"Having Ben back is absolutely huge," Hunter said. "I already know that Trey [Rios] is going to step up. There's no question about it. I really want to see how Erik [Enriquez], Cesar [Ramirez] and Riley [Vandaveer] perform [this weekend] because they're going to be incredibly important to any success that we're going to have this year."
 
The Shocker women enter this season without reigning AAC champion Yazmine Wright and all-conference runner Danielle Rinn and will be relying on the leadership of Abeba Sullivan and Lubna Aldulaimi to guide the young team.
 
"I expect Abeba and Lubna to do something, but we need to have more people perform well," Hunter said. "Miranda Dick, Lea Jerkovic, Peyton Pogge, all these girls are going to have to step up in order for us to have some success."
 
The women's team only has three upperclassmen and brings in six newcomers, entering the year with the goal of improving throughout the season.
 
"I just see that this team is one that's going to have to grow as the season goes," Hunter said.
 
This year's JK Gold Classic is a quad meet between the Shockers, Emporia State, Friends and Southwestern.
 
Duchatschek and Aldulaimi are the top returning finishers from last year's meet, having both placed sixth. The men race the 6,000 meters on Saturday before bumping up to the 8,000 meters for the remainder of regular season and the conference meet and finally tacking on another 2,000 meters for the NCAA Midwest Regional and NCAA Championships. The women start the year with three 5,000-meter races before moving up to the 6,000 meters for the Bradley Pink Classic and postseason meets.
 
"The competition level is not the same as we're going to be racing all year," Hunter said. "[The races are] shorter distances, for the men especially, so it only gives us some ideas of some things that we're going to be looking to see from our team, but it does give us a chance to try to run as a team, get everybody in uniform and kick off the season."
 
This meet serves as a rustbuster and gives Hunter an idea of how well the teams work together and follow the programs he's set for them but does not necessarily write the script for the remainder of the season.
 
"Last year, I thought our men looked bad at this meet and we had the best year we've ever had," he said. "It's really difficult to draw too many conclusions from this meet because of that."