With captain Chas Gillespie out for the season with an injury, the team has relied on a young group of runners to back up Chenoweth.

“It’s been heartening to see we’ve got young guys willing to step up,” Chenoweth said. “Ideally, we’d have the old guys who are really experienced, but you have to get experience somewhere. In three years we’ll have a really great team.”

While this season may not give the young squad an opportunity to advance to nationals as a group, the team is looking to sneak up on people at NCAA Regionals.

“We want to beat some teams that we didn’t beat at Heps,” Chenoweth said. “Usually we’ve been able to get a couple of teams we didn’t get in the season.”

The NCAA Regionals will also give the women another chance to prove their merit. Though Richardson won’t get another crack at Princeton’s top five, she will have plenty of talented runners testing her mettle.

“[Claire’s] got a little fire under her,” Olson said. “She wanted to do a little better at Heps than she did.”

If the women do hope to earn a national berth, the familiar setting of the race can only help. Boston University is hosting the meet at Franklin Park, the Crimson’s home course and a frequent site for practices.

“It’s great to be on our home course,” Saretsky said. “We train there, we practice there. Our kids know the course really, really well.”

The last time Harvard competed at Franklin Park in the Harvard-Yale race on Oct. 2, both the men’s and women’s teams emerged victorious. Chenoweth and Richardson led the way with their individual wins, and the women had their largest margin of victory since 2001. The meet also featured something cross country runners don’t always enjoy—fans.

“[Fan attendance] is a really great motivation,” Olson said. “It makes it that much more fun.”

Certainly, the Crimson would like to have the same success against the entire region that it had against the Bulldogs, relying once again on the friendly crowd for motivation. Although similar domination may be unlikely, surprises and upsets in cross-country races are not unheard of.

“You can’t know what’s going to happen on a given day,” Richardson said. “You take care of what’s in your control. That’s my goal—to do what I can.”