It's official, Montana State cross country standout Patrick Casey (Laurel) has earned one of the four individual at-large berths to the 2010 NCAA Cross Country championships from the Mountain Region.

As expected, Northern Arizona and Brigham Young each received team at-large bids to the national meet, joining automatic Mountain Region qualifiers New Mexico and Colorado.

The four at-large slots go to the top individual runners not associated with an NCAA qualifying squad. Casey, who was the second runner in after placing 12th at the Mountain Region meet, will be joined by Justin Tyner and Jeremy Drenckhahn of Air Force and Josh McCave of Utah Valley.

“This is a tremendous accomplishment for Patrick,” said MSU head coach Dale Kennedy. “He made significant progress from finishing 21st last year, to 12th this season.”

The NCAA national meet will be held Monday, Nov. 22 in Terre Haute, Ind., and is a course Casey is familiar with, having competed there on two occasions. Casey ran on the LaVern Gibson Championship Course located at the Wabash Valley Family Sports Center at the Pre-National race in October.

“It's a huge advantage for Patrick to have run on this course twice,” Kennedy said. “We all learned a lot from the Pre-National race, and since that time, Patrick has had very intelligent races.”