The Hawks want to stick to the game plan and run with confidence.

By Connor Sindberg
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After finishing two seconds behind Illinois State last week, the Hawkeye women’s cross-country squad will get a chance at redemption.

Today, the Hawks will travel to Normal, Illinois, for the Illinois State Invitational. The race is slated to start at 5 p.m. at the Weibring Golf Course on the Illinois State campus.

Tonight’s competition features seven Illinois schools — DePaul, Eastern Illinois, Illinois-Chicago, Illinois State, Loyola, Northern Illinois, and Southern Illinois-Edwardsville. The rest of the competition rounds out with Iowa and Wisconsin. The Badgers come in as the heavy favorites, ranked No.11 in the nation.

With more teams competing, head coach Layne Anderson believes his team will have to be at their best if they want to place.

“It will be a much more competitive meet this Friday than our home meet this past Friday,” he said. “This week, we will have to race well to compete with the top finishers and teams.”

When the gun sounds tonight, Anderson wants to see the same energy in practice converted onto the playing field.

“Our No. 1 objective is to perform in competition like the runners we show ourselves to be on the workout days,” Anderson said.

Two experienced runners who hope to progress from last year’s Illinois State Invitational are juniors Tess Wilberding and Carolyn Newhouse.

“Individually, I hope to improve on my time from this meet last year and to be an asset to the group,” Newhouse said.

In last season’s race, both Wilberding and Newhouse finished in the top 25. But now, with plenty of racing experience, they come into tonight’s meet with high expectations.

“I would like to place up front and finish much stronger than last week,” Wilberding said. “I also want to be faster than where I was a year ago at this meet.”

One way to improve as a team is stick to a plan. And one strategy the Hawks have worked on this week is running together in a pack.

“We want to work as a pack and help to use each other’s strengths to improve,” Newhouse said.

Two Hawkeyes you can expect to lead the pack are impressive sophomores Madison Waymire and Kelly Breen. Both underclassmen finished in the top 10 last week at the Hawkeye Early Bird Invitational, and this week, they hope to use those performances.

“I definitely want to beat my time from last year on the course,” Breen said. “I would also like for our team to place better than we did last year.”

As a team, the Hawkeyes want to finish at the top, or at least feel confident that their game plan helped them. The big question is whether they can perform under the lights.

Improvement from last week would be nice for Anderson to see, but the meet still will serve as a tune-up for the more difficult conference and NCAA meets down the road.

“I want to see the team compete well and leave with confidence,” Anderson said.

Follow @CSindberg32 on Twitter for news, updates, and analysis of the Iowa women’s cross-country team.