Eric van der Els excited to compete at NCAA Championship on Monday

When Eric van der Els was watching the NCAA Cross Country Championship selection show on Sunday, his stream was a little bit behind. His phone started blowing up with congratulatory messages from his teammates, but he had to wait to see for himself before he actually believed it happened.

"A few minutes later, I saw it on my TV, and that's what really made it official," van der Els said. "I wanted to see it with my own eyes. It was a really great moment."

In addition to the 31 teams that qualified, van der Els was one of just 38 runners to qualify as an individual for the biggest race in the sport on Monday. Van der Els said he felt good about his chances at being selected after he finished fourth at the Big East Championship, especially since he finished ahead of most of the runners on the teams from the Big East that qualified — Butler, Georgetown and Villanova.

His coach Greg Roy said that with the strange season this year, there weren't any regional qualifiers, so while he knew van der Els deserved to be selected, when everything comes down to a committee, there's no guarantee. But he was very happy to see van der Els qualify.

"It's very gratifying," Roy said. "Nobody deserves it more than Eric."

Roy said in the regional qualifiers as a junior in 2019, van der Els fell down on the bad terrain at the start of the race and missed qualifying by just one second. So this year was great retribution for that.

Van der Els is the first male cross country runner at UConn to qualify for the NCAA Championship since Max Feldman in 2006. He said it will be an honor to represent UConn on the biggest stage in college cross country.

"It means a lot," van der Els said. "It's been over a decade since the last time this has happened, so it's just a great honor. This is something Coach Roy and I have always wanted to accomplish in my college career, and I'm happy that it happened in my last season of cross country."

Van der Els said he wasn't even sure he was going to get to have a senior season with the COVID-19 pandemic going on, but he kept training and was able to achieve something really special.

"It's just the hard work that we've all put in over the last 50 weeks of no competitions," van der Els said. "All of the weeks of training and not having to put your body through a bunch of races I think has really been the difference of being able to make everything come together."

Roy said he's built the team around him in the last few years by recruiting kids from his neck of the woods in Fairfield County, and van der Els has served as a great leader and team captain over the past two years. Roy said what makes him such a great runner is a combination of his skills and his mindset.

"He's not afraid to train," Roy said. "He's got a good combination of speed and cardiovascular muscle, and he's a great racer. He's just a really good competitor, and he loves to compete against the best."

Van der Els is really looking forward to going down to Stillwater, Oklahoma, where the race is being held because one of his favorite parts of running in college has been the opportunity to travel to new places, and he's never been to Oklahoma before. Most of all, he's just looking forward to competing with the most talented field of runners he's ever raced against before.

Roy said the top 40 finishers are named All-Americans, so that's an obvious goal to reach for. But for van der Els, he just wants to give it everything he's got.

"I just want to represent the school at the highest level, represent myself at the highest level," van der Else said. "I'm going to practice what I preach. I've been telling the team this whole year that we gotta go out there and be able to come out of the race and look in the mirror and say you really gave everything you had. Because in these uncertain times, we don't know what the next opportunity is going to be. So that's what I'm going to expect for myself."