HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Last year the Hutchinson Community College’s home cross country meet was renamed the Terry Masterson Classic in honor of the program’s longtime and highly successful head coach.

Blue Dragon cross country head coach Justin Riggs looked to make year No. 2 of the Masterson Classic both fun and unique. Riggs has come up with formula to do just that.

This year’s Blue Dragon home cross country meet will be ran under the lights of the Fun Valley Sports Complex and will be named the Terry Masterson Twilight Classic.

“We’ve always put a lot of effort into our home meet and it was a decent meet, but I wanted to do something special that would have a bigger draw,” Riggs said about his decision to change the format from a tradition race to the format that will be used on Friday night. “I’ve seen other teams travel out of state to twilight meets and I thought that would be fun, but there were none in Kansas and we decided to try one.”

The course will run along the outside of the softball diamond fences of the main six fields at Fun Valley. The start line is out beyond the fence of Field No. 2 (northeast field) and the finish chute will be in between Fields 2 and 3. Each lap is one mile. The women’s race at 9 p.m. will be three laps and the men’s race, scheduled for 9:35 p.m., will be four laps.

The field turned out to be much larger that Riggs was anticipating for the first Twilight event. There will be 16 total teams with 136 men and 125 women running.

Along with Hutchinson, Barton, Butler, Cloud County, Dodge City, Hesston College and Pratt will be junior college teams competing. NCAA Division II programs Emporia State and Oklahoma Wesleyan are in the field as well as NAIA teams Bethany College, Bethel College, McPherson College, St. Gregory’s St. Mary’s, Sterling College and York College.

The St. Mary’s men were the 2015 NAIA men’s national runner-up.

The Blue Dragons will also host the 2016 Region VI cross country championships. That will be contested on Nov. 29 at Westar/Prairie Ridge Park.