Madison's Pizzeria in McCandless was a popular place Sunday afternoon for members of the North Allegheny High School boys' cross country team and its followers and friends.

That's where team members gathered while awaiting word on whether the Wexford Flats Running Club squad -- that's the name the North Allegheny team is going by since this is not a school-related function -- qualified for the Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Ore., Saturday.

The Wexford Flats team competed in the Nike Cross Northeast Regional last Saturday at Bowdoin Park in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., and finished third behind two teams from New Jersey.

The top two teams from each regional automatically qualify for the national competition. But Nike also selected four at-large squads to fill out the 22-team field.

North Allegheny coach/Wexford Flats chaperone Jim LeDonne got the word early Sunday afternoon that his team had received an at-large berth and headed for the pizzeria to inform the runners.

"There must have been 60 to 70 people there with friends and everybody," LeDonne said. "Everybody is pretty excited."

Eight runners and LeDonne will leave today for Portland, Ore. The boys' race, the last of four Saturday, is at noon on the 3.1-mile Nike course. The expenses are being picked up by Nike and the team will return Sunday.

At the Northeast Regional, the Wexford Flats team, which consists of Ryan Gil, Patrick Morgan, Chase Broussard, Eric Balaban, Will Appman, Matt Robertson, Jay Cadwallader and Adam Jacob, had 83 points. The Knights Running Club was first with 71 points and the Bergen Cross County Club was next with 74.

So why was Wexford Flats given an at-large bid? It had to do with the fourth-place finisher at the regional.

"Teams can earn points during the season by beating teams out of their region," LeDonne said. "We didn't earn any points because we didn't compete out of our region, but Danbury (Conn.), which finished behind us in fourth place at the regional, did and had something like four points.

"But Nike has a rule that a team can't jump over a team and since we beat Danbury at the regional we were both given at-large bids. The other two at-large berths went to teams from California."

Gil was Wexford Flats' top finisher and placed 14th overall with a time of 16 minutes, 32.3 seconds. Broussard (16:44.8) was 22nd overall, Morgan (16:51.3) was 25th and Appman (16:54.9) was 28th. Balaban was 38th with a time of 17:04.2.

"All five of our top guys ran really well. There was only a 32 [second] spread between them, which is outstanding," LeDonne said. "It was maybe our best race of the year as a team and Eric [Balaban] finished a head of every other team's fifth runner."

That's saying something since North Allegheny easily won the WPIAL Class AAA title in October. But at the PIAA championships, North Allegheny had an off day and finished third behind North Penn and LaSalle College High. North Allegheny, which expected to challenge for the team title, was a point out of second place.

The poor showing left the North Allegheny runners with a sour taste. That's why they decided to give the Nike Cross Championships a try.

"They didn't want to have the season end that way," LeDonne said. "I told them to give it a couple of days [after the PIAA meet in Hershey] and to think about things before making a final decision.

"They were adamant about wanting to compete at the [Nike] regional and see what they could do."

While other runners rested their legs after the PIAA finals Nov. 1, the North Allegheny runners continued to train. They believed they had something to prove.

They did at the Nike regionals. PIAA champion North Penn finished a distant sixth.

Now, as Wexford Flats, North Allegheny has a chance to go after a national title with no pressure.

"[Cross country] is the one sport that has a true national championship [for high schools]," LeDonne said. "This will be a great experience for us to go out there and compete against the top teams in the country."

According to LeDonne, the course in Portland, Ore., is more along the style of European cross country events. He said there are mounds and bales of straw runners will have to climb and jump.

"We're getting some bales to jump over at practice this week," LeDonne said earlier in the week. "We're going to try and get familiar with what the course will be like."

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NOTES -- the Pennsylvania Track and Field Coaches Association has selected its all-state cross country team for this season. Named to the boys' first team are Canon-McMillan's Matt Gregory and Gateway's D.J. Krystek. Seneca Valley's Cam Stauffer is on the second team. Selected to the girls' first team are Hampton's Elaina Balouris, Latrobe's Natalie Bower and Norwin's Leslie Kovach and Jenna Gigliotti. Named to the second team are Latrobe's Mary Jo Jakubek, Peters Township's Kayla Keddal, Oakland Catholic's Marissa Polk and Trinity's Chelsea Sumney.