KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The wait was unnerving. But the result was worth it. On Tuesday, the Goshen men's cross country team discovered they had made the cut to run at the NAIA Cross Country National Championship. It marks the third straight season that Goshen will appear in the National Championship.
 
Goshen was awarded one of the 12 at-large spots given to teams that did not win their conference meet. There will be 36 teams and 82 individual qualifiers competing. Goshen finished 6^th in the Crossroads League, but the league has five teams in the top 25 and Goshen was receiving votes in the poll released on Monday. Six teams will be representing the Crossroads League at the race - Grace, Huntington, Indiana Wesleyan, Marian, and Goshen all earned at-large bids. Taylor won the automatic bid by becoming the conference champion last weekend.
 
The 66^th Annual NAIA Men's Cross Country Championships will take place on November 19, 2021, in Vancouver, Washington. Hosted by the Cascade Collegiate Conference, the race will occur at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Championship Course.
 
Head coach Rustin Nyce was relieved to find out that the team had earned a spot. "It is hard to be in a waiting situation when you just feel helpless," he said. "At that point, it was just left in the hands of the voters. But now I am excited to go back to Nationals again!"
 
This is the tenth time that a Goshen team has qualified for the NAIA national championship. In addition to the men's cross country national trips in 2014, 2019, and 2020, the women's basketball team qualified in 2004 and 2016, while men's soccer reached the final site in 1971, 1973, 1977, 2006.
 
Nelson Kemboi leads the Goshen pack. Earlier this season, he broke the school record by running the 8k (4.97 miles) in 24 minutes and 38.6 seconds at the NAIA Great Lakes Challenge. He beat the previous school record by 2.9 seconds, a mark set by Ryan Smith in 2016.
 
The Maple Leafs finished 27^th in the 2014 national championship, 20^th in 2019, and 22^nd in 2020.
 
The men's race will begin at 1:30 pm EST on November 19. It is the sixth time that the cross country championships have been hosted in Vancouver.
 
Stay tuned to GoLeafs.net and the Maple Leafs' official Twitter accounts (@GC_MapleLeafs and @GCMapleLeafs_XT) for more information as the meet nears.