By Becky Plevin

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern cross country runners know who their competition will be at Sunday’s Big Ten Championships in East Lansing, Mich. This knowledge has helped them focus in practice, junior Diana Hossfeld said.

“We’ll say things like, ‘pretend this is the end of the race and pretend Nora is an Iowa girl,'” Hossfeld said. “Iowa is the only team that hasn’t beaten us, so if there was an Iowa girl ahead of you, you better get her.”

After competing against the same girls throughout the season, Hossfeld said she starts knowing which girls she should be competitive with. She said she wants to keep up with Michigan State runner Natalie Stein, who Hossfeld has competed against in the past.

“She’s also from Southern California, I always remember hearing her name, and we tend to finish close together in races,” Hossfeld said. “She’s the one I try to focus on when I’m running.”

Helping to blow past all Iowa State runners will be freshmen Mallory O’Niel and Casey Shea. The two will be the only freshman competing on the Wildcat’s team of nine this weekend. Shea said she didn’t think her inexperience at the college level would hinder her performance at Big Tens.

“It doesn’t have to do with what grade you’re in,” Shea said. “I’ve been running for five years now, and I feel like I have a base to go off — just not at the collegiate level.”

When she walked onto the team this summer, O’Niel said never thought she’d be competing on the varsity squad.

“I didn’t think I would be one of the major parts of the team, but I’m happily surprised,” O’Niel said. “Coming here, I thought it was going to be a low key thing, just getting used to college running. It didn’t really end up that way.”

O’Niel said that after running in East Lansing course at the Spartan Open on Sept. 19, the women know there won’t be any surprises on the course.

“It will help knowing how far it is to the finish and knowing different points where I should be picking it up,” O’Niel said.”There is a turn close to the finish, so I’ll know to start sprinting earlier because you can’t really see the finish.”

Hossfeld said that when she ran in Big Tens as a freshman, she had a different outlook than she does now, in her third appearance at the competition.

“Freshman year, I was kind of clueless,” Hossfeld said. “I had no expectations for myself. Now I have more expectations as to where I want to be.”

Hossfeld is excited for the competition.

“We’ve been really getting pumped up,” Hossfeld said. “No one expects us to do anything. We haven’t been performing where we want to be, so we’re confident that this is a race where we can do it.”

Shea was equally optimistic about the meet.

“I think they are underestimating us,” Shea said. “We have the potential to finish really well in the Big Ten, it’s just a matter of us putting it together on same day.”