The hay's in the barn, as they say, and all that's left is the racing for the second-ranked Haverford College men's cross country team.
Saturday's 8-kilometer NCAA 2010 Division III Cross Country Championship in Waverly, Iowa, marks the end of a season in which the No. 2 Fords captured both the Centennial Conference title and Mideast Regional crown by identical scores.
In both postseason meets Haverford posted a winning total of 23 points nabbing first-place, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh at each event. Centennial foe Dickinson College -- the 2009 conference champion -- was the runner-up in each instance.
Leading the way across the finish line at the conference and regional sites was Haverford's Anders Hulleberg, the 2010 Mideast Region's runner of the year. The senior outraced the runner-up at the Centennial meet by 12 seconds and then trumped the second-place finisher at the regional by 10 seconds.
Hulleberg's winning efforts could have been wasted in the team scoring race had a white wave of Haverford singlets not followed closely behind.
At the league meet (95 participants), the spread between the first and fifth scoring runners for the Fords was just 25 seconds. At the regional, with 316 runners crowding the course, the spread was a paltry 30 seconds.
Senior Lucas Fuentes was the second Haverford runner at both the conference and regional, taking fourth for the Fords each time. Junior Eric Arnold, seventh at the conference meet, was fifth at the regional.
Senior Chris Southwick crossed in sixth-place at both meets and sophomore Jordan Schilit rounded out the regional scoring for the Fords with a seventh-place finish. Lurking close behind Schilit at the regional were teammates Tim Schoch (Jr., 11th) and Joseph Carpenter (Sr., 15th).
Last fall North Central (Ill.) College secured the national crown with 56 points easily outdistancing runner-up Williams College's 181 points. The Fords were eighth (333 pts.) as Southwick took 59th, Hulleberg was 66th, Schoch was 77th and Carpenter was 88th.
Head coach Tom Donnelly,the 2010 Mideast Region men's coach of the year, knows his highly experienced squad is primed for a spot on the national podium.
The 2007 squad -- with Hulleberg, Fuentes, Southwick and Carpenter just fresh-faced freshmen running behind upperclass men -- captured the runner-up spot at nationals followed by a 16th place finish in 2008 and then an eighth-place result last year.
The young group from 2007 is now the experienced one in 2010, and they have put in the work over the past seasons to be in a position Saturday to battle for the national title in the farmlands of Iowa.
The hays in the barn, it's time to open the doors and see if it's a prize-winning crop.