The IU cross country teams host the Big Ten Championships Sunday

This weekend, the IU women's cross country team has something to prove to the rest of the Big Ten.\nOn their home course Sunday, the Hoosiers host this year's Big Ten Championships. With six opponents ranked in the top 30 in the coach's poll, IU will look to surprise some teams now that it has a healthy roster.\n"The competition as a whole is that basically the top seven teams (in the Big Ten) are in the top 30 in the country," IU coach Judy Wilson said. "That's probably the best it's been, and now this is probably one of the better conferences in the country."\nFor the last several meets, IU has competed without its fourth and fifth runners -- sophomore Stephanie Greer and freshman Kellee Lemcke. Lemcke said she will be glad to be running her first race since mid-September, and the race will act as good preparation for Regionals.\nSophomores Ashley Sommer and Kristina Trcka stepped up to fill Greer and Lemcke's absences, posting career-best times, but the team's performance over the past few weeks resulted in the squad dropping out of the top 30.\nHowever, the Hoosiers believe they can use their course to their advantage, Sommer said. IU has one of the hillier courses in the country and Sommer said the hills can act as "secret weapons" against some of the schools that have not run in Bloomington before.\n"Even though some of these girls are freshmen and they haven't raced (on the course), we've been practicing on it for the whole season now, so they're at least more comfortable than some of the other teams that haven't been here," Sommer said. "A team like Illinois isn't going to be prepared for the hills."\nLemcke agreed and said it is important IU is able to get a closer look at the course than all other teams in the race.\nWilson said it will also be important for the team's runners to step up and have their best races this weekend in order to finish in the top three.\n"We can run hard and hopefully place up to third, but we'll have to earn it," Sommer said.\nEven though the competition is the toughest it has been all year for the Hoosiers, Wilson said she is not concerned with it as much as one would think.\n"It's a bunch of other 18- to 22-year-olds that are going to class and studying at night and doing all of the other things that you're doing," Wilson said. "You're running against people like you, so why not think you have a chance to win"