“I noticed one of our rivals pointed out that they were one of just five teams to send a men’s and a women’s team to the national meet in each of the past three years,” he said. “So I had to go back and look.”

What he found shows just how far the Warrior program has come during his 15 years at the helm.

The Warriors are not only one of those five schools that have sent men’s and women’s teams to the NAIA national meet during the past three years, but LCSC is the only college to have sent both teams for the last five years.

And it doesn’t stop there.  The Warrior women currently hold the longest active streak in the NAIA for consecutive appearances in the Top 25 poll. With a 2011 preseason ranking of No. 16, the Warriors have been ranked 94 consecutive times, dating back to Sept. 21, 2001. The next closest streak is 74.

“That kind of tells you about tradition and what has happened for us over the last 10-12 years,” Collins said.”I think tradition means to come here, you are going to nationals. Right now, no one else can say this.

“From a recruiting standpoint, if there is someone I want, I can say ‘Hey, look what you can do here. You are going to have an opportunity to run at nationals. You are going to have to earn that right, but her you are going to get the opportunity.’  I think that says a lot about the support we have from the school and what the runners tell each other. My best recruiting tool is these guys (the runners).”

This is a far cry from Collins’ first season when he said he had to use basketball and volleyball players to round out his roster so the team could score in meets.

“I think recruiting has changed a lot because now I have kids contacting me,” he says. “I’m almost being discriminatory about who meets the qualifications and characteristics of the program because the quality of the program is so much higher. I really don’t think it has anything to do with me. I think it’s because the program has had enough success with recruiting the right type of kids – kids who work hard and are team oriented – and runners want to be a part of that.”

Collins found that to be true during the past year in recruiting. The Warriors will have six men and nine women runners on the roster this season who are freshmen. Despite the youth, both teams enter the season with big national goals.

WOMEN

Collins has his biggest women’s roster since he’s been at LCSC with 20 runners. Along with the nine freshmen, he has four sophomores, three juniors and four seniors. Despite the youth, it is an experienced team with five of the seven runners returning who competed at nationals last season, including senior Kelsey Klettke, who earned All America honors.

“Looking at the women’s team on paper, this team should be a good as last year’s squad,” Collins said. “Last year we finished 18^th at nationals, which was higher than our ranking at the time.”

The Warriors have plenty of motivation this season.  After winning the Frontier Conference title during the first three seasons the meet was held, LCSC was edged by two points by Carroll College at last year’s meet. LCSC avenged that loss by finishing ahead of Carroll at the national meet, and the team continues to use the FC title loss for motivation.

“We are not the defending champions anymore,” Collins said. “We have never said that before. That’s a new concept so this team is motivated to return to that top spot in the conference.”

The key for the Warriors will be having the rest of the team close the gap on Klettke, who was LCSC’s top finisher at every race a year ago. Klettke, who is from Vancouver, Wash., won the Frontier Conference meet and then recorded the highest finish by a Warrior woman at the NAIA meet as she came in 11^th.

Collins said the Warriors have the same potential as last year with a number of runners who could finish anywhere between second and 12^th for the team. He said that depth helped the team, but the group was usually a good 30 seconds behind Kelsey.

“Kelsey is in a real similar to where she was a year ago, which is real encouraging because of the way she ran last year,” Collins said. “We’ve got some girls trying to bridge that gap, which is the real key for us. That’s the reason we didn’t win the conference title last year. Carroll was able to put finishers between Kelsey and the rest of our girls. Scoring-wise, that just killed us. But the returning girls are motivated by it and the new girls already realize how important it is.

Leading the list of returners are seniors Madison Randall of Eugene, Ore., and Stephanie Shuel of Yakima. Randall finished second on the team and 82^nd overall at nationals last season, while Shuel won the conference meet as a freshman and also was on the national team a year ago. The fourth senior is Francis Rojas of Lima, Peru.

Also returning from the national meet a year ago are Chelsey Leighton, a junior from Lapwai, and Amanda Palmer, a junior from Weiser. The third junior on the team, Whitlee Young, redshirted last season.

Collins said it will be key for the sophomores and freshmen to step up and challenge. He said freshman Sophie Bush of Newport, Wash., has looked strong in the preseason and actually ran with Klettke for a good portion of a preseason time trial.

“You never know what you have with freshmen so it’s hard to say how this team will do on a national level,” Collins said. “When you get into those teams ranked in the 12-20 range, there really isn’t a lot of difference one day to the next. Hopefully we are on the front end of that. If we can bridge that gap between Klettke and the rest of the team, we could even be in the top 10 range.”

MEN

The Warrior men are ranked No. 13 in the NAIA preseason poll, which also is a credit to the team’s reputation. The Warriors return only two of their seven runners who competed at nationals a year ago and are even younger than the women’s team. The men have just one senior in Sean Hagan, a transfer from Boise State. There are four juniors, leaving two-thirds of the roster being either sophomores (4) or freshmen (6).

Youth, however, isn’t the Warriors’ biggest concern. That lies with junior Dave Marks, who won the Frontier Conference individual title and led the Warrior men to their fourth consecutive FC crown. He also earned All America honors by finishing 20^th at the NAIA national meet.

However, last spring and only a few days before he was scheduled to compete at the NAIA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, he jumped off an RV and wound up with a heel fracture. The broken bone didn’t allow him to compete at the track meet and he spent most of the summer not being able to work out. As the season begins, he only recently began to run three days in a row before taking a day off so not to overwork the heel and cause a setback in his recovery.

“Dave hasn’t been running a whole lot right now,” Collins said. “My initial fear is that we lost him for the season, then maybe by our home meet (Oct. 22) we could get him back at full speed. The way things are going, we may get him sooner. The one good thing about him, he gets into race shape quickly. Right now, we just don’t want to push his recovery.”

Junior Jimmy Oribo will be counted on heavily in his first year of cross country. Last year in the track season, he competed at the NAIA national meet in the 5,000- and 10,000-meters. He owns the school record in both events.

“He is running very well right now,” Collins said. “This summer, I would head out for my morning runs around 7 a.m. and he would be coming back from his. He’s very motivated.”

Collins also is high on freshman Sam Atkin from Lincolnshire, England. Atkin stands third on the United Kingdom’s all-time list for times in the 5,000 meters for the U-17 age bracket.

“Dave is a key part of the team, but we are all about the team,” Collins said. “In saying that, I think we have two guys on the team who are going to start off the season better than Dave did a year ago and Dave wound up as an All-American.”

Sophomore Hayden Randall, whose sister is Madison on the women’s team, also competed at nationals a year ago should be in the thick of the battle for varsity. Collins also is high on his two Codys – freshmen Cody Glad of Kearns, Utah, and Cody Larson of Boise.

“I think we have 3-4 freshmen that I really think are ready to step up and do well,” Collins said. “Some will take more time to develop. But everyone wants to be on the national team and we have a lot of runners wanting to step up.”

Collins said he’s feeling good about the Warriors.

“This is probably the most excited I’ve been in a long time,” he said. “This is one of my biggest recruiting classes, and quite possibly, especially on the men’s side, my best recruiting class. We have some extremely talented young people who are very motivated to be out there. “