Sophomore Evan Hitchcock will represent Ohio Wesleyan at the NCAA Division III men’s cross country championship meet, to be hosted by Baldwin-Wallace College on Saturday at the Highland Park Golf Course in Highland Hills. The men’s championship race is scheduled to begin at noon.

Hitchcock was an individual qualifier to the championship meet. He is the first Ohio Wesleyan runner to compete in the men’s cross country national championship meet since 1983, when Mark Kimball represented the Bishops.

Hitchcock was one of seven individual qualifiers from the Great Lakes Region. Each of the eight cross country regions send two teams to the national championship meet, and 16 additional teams receive at-large bids. After the 32 teams have been determined, the top seven individual finishers in each region who are not part of those 32 teams are selected as individual competitors.

Hitchcock finished 15th overall at Saturday’s Great Lakes Regional meet in Terre Haute, Ind., covering the 8,000-meter course in 26:22.54. He helped Ohio Wesleyan place sixth in the team standings, the Bishops’ best finish in a regional meet since 1981, when Ohio Wesleyan finished fourth in a 14-team competition. Ohio Wesleyan recorded the best finish among the nine North Coast Athletic Conference teams which competed in Saturday’s meet.