Diana Clock/The Hoya The Hoyas hope to better prepare for the National Championships this weekend.

After rolling to easy victories in their last two races, the No. 5 Georgetown women’s cross country team will face the biggest challenge of its season thus far on Saturday, as it travels to Terre Haute, Ind., for the Asics Pre-National Invitational.

The annual meet attracts many of the nation’s top teams and serves as a warm-up for the national championship, which takes place on the same course next month. This year, the meet will be broken into three divisions, with two seeded races containing 30 teams each and an open race. The Hoyas are scheduled to compete in the Blue seeded division alongside No. 1 Brigham Young, No. 4 Colorado, No. 11 Duke and four other nationally ranked teams. The other seeded section contains No. 2 Stanford, No. 3 Michigan State and No. 6 NC State.

Brigham Young is undefeated this season and enters the event as the heavy favorites. The team received all 13 first-place votes in the most recent national poll and dominated the Great American Cross Country Festival on Sept. 27, even without two of its top runners. On Saturday, the Cougars are expected to run their top four finishers from the Great American, as well as All-American Jesse Kindschi, who will be competing in her first race of the season. Senior Lindsey Thomsen, another All-American, is the only Brigham Young varsity runner scheduled to sit the race out.

“BYU is better than anyone in the country, even if they don’t run their seven best,” Georgetown’s Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Ron Helmer said. “But I’m not worrying about BYU. I’m going to worry about our team, and putting seven girls together who can function in a really tough, competitive race.”

Senior All-American Jill Laurendeau and junior Amanda Pape are expected to lead the Hoyas, with sophomores Nicole Lee and Jodee Adams-Moore providing junior Sarah Scholl, Georgetown’s third finisher from the Great American, another chance to prove herself in what is becoming a breakout season. After transferring to Georgetown as a sophomore and setting a new school record in the steeplechase last spring, Scholl has emerged as a star of the cross country team. This weekend, she will get another chance to compete against top-level national talent as she attempts to solidify a spot on the team’s postseason lineup.

“Based on what I’ve seen up to this point, Sarah should be in our top seven and could be in our top five at the national meet,” Helmer said. “I hope that happens, but the concern I have is whether she can get to the end at this level.”

According to Helmer, another of the team’s top runners, senior All-American Marni Kruppa, will continue to train for the Big East and NCAA Championship meets rather than make the trip this weekend to Pre-Nationals.

“As soon as Marni races, she clicks into a race mentality, and she probably would, on occasion, overwork as a result,” Helmer said. “I think sometimes racing becomes the driving force rather than just solid, intelligent training, and I want training to continue to be the issue.”

While Kruppa continues to train, the other members of Georgetown’s team will get a chance to familiarize themselves with the championship course, scout the competition and gain some experience in a high-intensity setting.

“We’ll see the course and get a feel for how it runs when it’s really crowded, and hopefully learn from it,” Helmer said. “It should help our comfort level when we go back the next time because we’ve done it before.”

After claiming victories at the George Washington Invitational on Sept. 28 and the Cowboy Jamboree on Oct. 5, the Hoyas seem ready for a challenge. They plan to use the meet both as a tune-up for the national meet and as a gauge of their current fitness level.

“With the depth that we have, we’ll put a better seven out there than most anybody else,” Helmer said. “We’ll just pack it in, and run tight and close together and come out of there with a positive feeling. And then we’ll have five weeks to see how much better we can get, and that’s really the critical part of this whole exercise.”