Area cross country teams are heading south tonight for the Ft. Madison cross country meet.

Washington is one of the schools attending, and so are all of the conference schools for Washington, making this meet a conference preview just four meets before the conference meet on October 17.

Head coach Steve Roth said conference previews give you a good idea of how the other teams are, but he thinks his kids compete better when they run against teams they’ve never seen before.

“We run at Ft. Madison [tonight] which is all of the conference schools, and then we run at Mt. Pleasant Tuesday which is all of the conference schools again,” Roth said. “Monday night’s meet was very nice, because we went to West Liberty and didn’t run against anyone we’ve seen this year and that is really nice because Mt. Pleasant is outstanding, they have an outstanding freshmen on their boy’s side and their girls are really good and Ft. Madison has an outstanding boy’s team and the girls are really good too, so I think we can catch a couple of those teams in there, but it is nice to run against teams that do not know.”

Columbus Junction will also be in attendance, and head coach Steve Riley said that most of their conference will also be at the meet, and that this is an opportunity for this team to compete well before their conference meet.

The Meet is at Ft. Madison’s cross country course and starts at 5 P.M.