This is the third year in a row that the HCAC has staged its cross country championship meets at Blue River Memorial Park in nearby Shelbyville, Indiana — which happens to be Franklin College's home course.

It is, however, the first of those three meets for which the Grizzlies have served as the host school, so Saturday afternoon means just a little more for coach Brandon Dworak.

"It hits a little bit differently when our name is the one that's on it as the host," he said. "Taking pride in it being your own course."

That pride isn't the only plus of having the meet at Blue River, though. The course is a tidy 18-mile drive east of campus, meaning that the Grizzly men and women will be able to sleep in their own beds and wake up at a decent hour as opposed to dealing with long bus rides, hotels or obscenely early wake-ups.

"We feel like there's a lot of advantages to the way things are set up for us this weekend, and we hope to take advantage of that," Dworak said. 

Franklin should be especially equipped to take advantage in the men's race. The Grizzlies outran more than half of the conference while winning the Hanover Invitational earlier in the season, and sophomore William Hirsch has been named the HCAC's Athlete of the Week on two separate occasions this season. The team is set up well to contend for a top-three spot, and Dworak believes Hirsch can crack the top five or perhaps even top three individually.

Dworak feels that the men are a veteran group, led by four seniors (Andre Davis, Jonah Decker, Riley Devening and Sam Wilson) that have enjoyed previous success on the course during their careers. Wilson was held out of the Grizzlies' last meet two weeks ago as a precaution, but the team is at full strength going into Saturday.

"We feel like we're very much in play for that top three," Dworak said.

The Griz women are considerably younger — Wynn Wellington is the lone senior on the roster — but hopeful that they can finish solidly in the middle of the conference pack.

In addition to having run on the course collegiately, most of the Grizzly men and women grew up in the Indianapolis area and had run high school meets at Blue River, adding another layer of familiarity; the college races (6 kilometers for the women, 8 for the men) are a little longer than the 5K high school setup, but Dworak says that "more or less, it's the same venue."

One key to success this weekend, Dworak believes, will be the Franklin teams' ability to maintain a championship-meet mentality while still enjoying the comforts of home.

"We feel good about how all of that's lining up," he said, "but obviously we still need to go out and execute on Saturday."