“We’ve grown together as a team, and the past few weeks have been the most crucial for how we’ve been performing in workouts and races,” Kroll said. “We’ve really been coming along as a strong group of girls, and we’re really excited and looking forward to what Sunday is going to bring for all of us.”

Still, the expectations are high for the team to perform, but Kroll said the team isn’t trying to define a place it wants to finish.

“We know how good we are and how good we are capable of being,” she said. “It’s always hard to make everyone click on the right day. I think we’re going out there with the mentality of running as hard as we can and leaving everything out on the course. I know if we do that on Sunday, our coaches and our team will all be really happy with our performance no matter what the outcome may be.”

Despite their youth, she said they want to make it a third championship in a row.

“If we go out there and race the way that we can, race like Spartans do, that’s a good thing that might be able to happen for us,” Kroll said.

On the men’s side of things, senior Josh McAlary said the team already has had a good season, but it needs to work on its start to races.

“We improved in every single race; we just need to move up at the start of the race and get in position to be competitive,” McAlary said. “We’re more of a team that hangs back a little bit and moves up throughout the race. We need to put ourselves in the upper 30 percent of the race during the first 5K and then start moving though them.”

Wisconsin has won the last 13 Big Ten championship meets, and McAlary said that hosting the race at home gives the Spartans a better chance to knock them off.

“It’s going to be fun,” he said. “You want to perform in front of your home crowd. It’s going to help a lot because you know the course better than any of the competitors and the sport is going to be a lot greater for Michigan State.”