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Sam Chelanga and Evans Kigen will represent Liberty at the NCAA Division I Cross Country National Championship, Monday afternoon, in Terre Haute, Ind. The men’s 10K event is scheduled to begin at 12:08 p.m.

Chelanga, who was recently named this year’s USTFCCCA Southeast Region Men’s Cross Country Athlete of the Year, finished second behind Oregon’s Galen Rupp in the 2008 national meet. The redshirt junior from Nairobi, Kenya, has won every race he’s entered this season with the exception of the NCAA Pre-Nationals on Oct. 17. In that 8K event, he led most of the way before being outrun by Stanford’s Chris Derrick on the final straightaway. Chelanga finished second with a time of 23:34.6, seven seconds behind Derrick.

Joining Chelanga will be redshirt junior Evans Kigen, who finished sixth overall at the regional meet, and 57th at Pre-Nationals. The native of Eldoret, Kenya, finished eighth at the 2007 NCAA Division II Cross Country Championship, representing the New York Institute of Technology. Kigen transferred to Liberty the following semester.

This marks the second consecutive year that the Flames have sent two runners to the national meet.
Liberty has had two NCAA Division I national champions in school history: Josh McDougal, the 2007 NCAA National Cross Country Champion, now a graduate assistant coach for the Flames, and current assistant coach Heather (Sagan) Zealand in the mile at the 2002 NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships.

This year’s event will take place at Wabash Valley Family Sports Center.

The men’s race is scheduled to begin at 12:08 p.m., followed by the women’s 6K race at 12:58 p.m. and the presentation of awards at 1:45 p.m.

The meet will be televised live on Versus, and will also be available via live video-stream on NCAA.com.