Lansing Sun

Michigan State University's cross country teams are set to compete in the 2024 Great Lakes Regional Championships, scheduled for Friday, November 15. The event will be held at Silver Creek Metro Park in Norton, Ohio, under the organization of the Mid-American Conference.

The women's 6k race is slated to commence at 11 a.m. Eastern Time, followed by the men's 8k race at noon. Silver Creek Metro Park, known as the second oldest park district in Ohio, will host the races. Parking for attendees is free of charge.

Top performers from each of the nine regional races on Friday will secure automatic bids. Additionally, thirteen other teams will vie for remaining at-large bids to be announced during a selection show on Saturday, November 16 at 5 p.m.

Recently, Michigan State's women's team placed sixth at the Big Ten Championships held in Champaign, Illinois on November 1. Rachel Forsyth achieved fourth place with a remarkable time of 19:26.2—setting a new record for a Spartan athlete in a Big Ten Championship 6k race and surpassing All-American Leah O'Connor's previous best from 2014 by one-tenth of a second. Forsyth's performance earned her first-team All-Big Ten honors and she was later named Big Ten Freshman of the Year.

Forsyth hails from Ann Arbor and is noted as Michigan State's first recipient of this award since Kaitlyn Hynes in 2021 and Maggie Farrell in 2017. She joins an exclusive group as only the sixth woman from Michigan State to earn this distinction in program history.

In men's competition at the Big Ten Championships, Michigan State secured fourth place overall with all five scoring athletes achieving personal-best times. Andrew Nolan repeated his success by earning first-team All-Big Ten honors for a second consecutive season after finishing eighth with a personal best time of 22:59.3. Riley Hough finished eighteenth with a time of 23:08.4 and received second-team All-Big Ten recognition.

Last year’s Great Lake Regionals saw Michigan State’s women finish third while their male counterparts took fifth place. Notably, it marked another successful season where seven Spartans across both teams garnered All-Region honors—the thirteenth occurrence within fifteen seasons where six or more runners achieved such accolades.