Things are heating up in the Catamount athletic department with football season starting and basketball right around the corner. But, most don’t hear about our Catamount cross country team. The Western Carolinian recently sat in with Josh Thompson on Power 90.5’s “The Litter Box” to speak with Danny Williamson, Western’s cross country coach, about this upcoming season and some of his thoughts about this year. Here’s what he had to say: WC: This year’s women’s teams, very young team, lots of freshmen, have you taken a different approach to preparing this year?DW: We’ve kind of backed off the amount of volume that we are doing, make sure we keep everyone healthy and bring them along. They’ve done a very nice job in responding on what they have to do.WC: Despite the loss of Adam Puett from the Men’s team, who in particular do you expect to step up?DW: We have all-Southern Conference track-and-field Dan Fassinger returning. We have a great group of younger guys, who it’s just their turn to step up, Dylan Hermalee, Field Miller, Noah Taylor, and Jesse Ramirez, all were here last year and were kind of learning the ropes; now it’s their opportunity, and we’ve challenged them. ZC: How do both teams look for this season, standing-wise?DW: Well, the preseason ranking just came out and they have the men’s team to finish 5th and the women’s team to finish 8th and I love that cuse they we are going prove everybody who voted for us to finish in those positions wrong. We wish both the women’s and men’s cross country team the best! Go Cats!