PORTLAND, Ore. — Fans of the NBA will know that the league's Christmas Day games serve as essentially a second season opener. Teams, of course, start playing in October, but the casual fan starts to pay attention on Christmas Day.
 
Fans of the Portland State cross country program can relate to that. While the Vikings officially opened their season on Sept. 2 with the Viking Rust Buster at Westmoreland Park, the team will treat this Friday's races at the Bill Dellinger Invitational – at Pine Ridge Golf Club in Springfield, Ore. – as a second chance to make a first impression.
 
The reason behind that is clear. The Vikings raced at the Rust Buster the same week that runners reported back to campus. Head coach David Hepburn said that the program only had one true training session before racing at the Rust Buster. Several runners who will race at the Bill Dellinger Invitational and likely be fixtures of the Vikings' lineup throughout the season, did not race at the Rust Buster for that reason.
 
"Rust Buster was like a soft opener. We literally had one workout before the meet. It really was a second workout, a hard effort at some sort of a race pace to see where we were," Hepburn said of the team's season opener. "[The Bill Dellinger Invitational] feels like a little bit more of a hard open. The competition is a little deeper. There are more teams, more good teams as well. We'll have a few more people in a jersey this time around."
 
The Vikings now have three weeks of training under their belts rather than just one session. Additionally, the men's and women's teams have defined goals to measure themselves against – something they didn't have for their first meet as those were formed at the program's retreat, which the Vikings left for immediately after Rust Buster.
 
Hepburn said he won't reveal publicly the goals that the team laid out at the retreat. However, he said he was impressed, both with how lofty the goals were and also the way both teams set them up.
 
"When they set their goals, I thought they did a really good setting very appropriate goals. It was a sliding scale and so it wasn't just all or nothing," Hepburn said. "A lot of them were team goals that would lead to success, not just a measure of success by itself. It was more of, how do we do these things on a regular basis so that they will lead to success. And I thought that was really good, and it was very team-focused, too."
 
This same weekend served as a stepping stone towards the Vikings' goals last year. Both the Viking men and women beat three regionally ranked teams at the Roy Griak Invitational on Sept. 24 last year, putting the Vikings in the men's and women's west region rankings for the rest of the year.
 
The same opportunity awaits the Vikings this year. Both the men and women are already ranked in the USTFCCCA West Region – the men stand 9th, the women 11th – but they'll still have to prove their worth Friday against a field that will feature an abundance of ranked teams.  Eight of the nine Division I women's teams competing at the meet are regionally ranked, as are six of the seven Division I men's programs.
 
The Vikings are the third-highest ranked team in the West Region among teams in the men's field, behind Portland (ranked 4th in the West and 19th in the nation) and Oregon (6th in the West, receiving votes nationally). Washington State (10th), Cal State Fullerton (13th) and UCLA (14th) are ranked behind the Viking men in the West Region rankings.
 
The Viking women find themselves as the fifth-highest ranked team in the West Region among the field. Oregon (3rd in the West, 16th nationally), Oregon State (5th in the West, 24th nationally), Portland (8th in the West) and UC Davis (10th) are ranked ahead of the Vikings in the West. Texas is again ranked second in the South Central Region on the women's side, and is receiving votes nationally. Washington State (12th in the West) and Cal State Fullerton (13th) enter the meet ranked behind the Vikings.
 
"We had some success [at Griak], beating some ranked teams and surprising some people. Maybe we can do that again this year," Hepburn said of facing all the ranked teams at Friday's Dellinger Invite. "It's a lot less travel. It's not a flight, it's not a time-zone change. It feels much more like we're at home, but we are making it a travel meet by going down the night before and staying down there. We get to practice travel, since we are going to have some bigger meets that require travel. Some of that just takes a little getting used to."
 
The other thing the Vikings will need to get used to is running with a race plan. Hepburn said he and the other coaches didn't burden the runners with a plan at Rust Buster. But that'll change this Friday.
 
"We kind of let them go at Rust Buster. There was no real race strategy or plans," Hepburn said of the Rust Buster. "Some of them we didn't know how they would race, or whatever those conditions may be. We've learned a lot more about them in the last three weeks, so we can start to formulate some plans and see where people are. It'll be interesting. There are different conversations now."
 
One thing the Rust Buster helped highlight was the team's depth. Even without several runners who likely will be near the top of their lineups on both sides, the Vikings posted their best finishes ever at the Rust Buster. Tatum Miller led an individual and team sweep of the meet titles for the Viking women, as she became the first Viking – man or woman – to win an individual race at the Rust Buster. Keynan Abdi also posted the highest finish ever at the meet by a Viking man while finishing second overall.
 
Three other Viking women finished in the top 10 at the Rust Buster. Jamie Zamrin and Sammy Burke finished fourth and fifth, respectively, while Phoebe Brown placed ninth overall. Josh Jarpey, meanwhile, joined Abdi in the top 10 for the Viking men as he placed ninth.
 
With more runners in the fold Friday and with more training under their belts, the Vikings should be set up for more success down at the Bill Dellinger Invitational. This year marks a return for the Vikings to the meet. Portland State competed at Dellinger five times out of six years from 2010-15, but then hasn't been back to the meet since then. Hepburn hopes the meet can become a regular part of the Vikings' schedule now, however.
 
"You're definitely going to have a lot of Oregon kids who are going to be excited to race in Eugene," Hepburn said. "And even anyone else who's not an Oregon kid. The U of O has its own cache across the country, across the globe. So, there's some excitement, there's a little buzz about being able to race down at U of O."
 
And that excitement should help as the Vikings gear up for their second season opener.
 
Meet Info
Sept. 23 – Bill Dellinger Invitational – Springfield, Ore. (Pine Ridge Golf Club)
 
Meet Schedule
Time (PT)        Race
11 a.m.            Men's 8k
11:45 a.m.       Women's 6k
 
Bill Dellinger Invitational Field Rankings
National
Men: Portland (19), Oregon (RV)
Women: Oregon (16), Oregon State (24), Texas (RV)
 
Regional
Men: (West Region): Portland (4), Oregon (6), Portland State (9), Washington State (10), Cal State Fullerton (13), UCLA (14)
Women: (South Central Region): Texas (2); (West Region): Oregon (3), Oregon State (5), Portland (8), UC Davis (10), Portland State (11), Washington State (12), Cal State Fullerton (13)