Athletics Australia will today announce the Australian team, featuring Yoa from Ballarat, to compete in Bydgoszcz on Sunday, March 28.

Yoa earned selection with a third to Ballarat Olympian Collis Birmingham in the selection trials at Brimbank on Sunday.

Like the now Melbourne-based Birmingham, Yoa has worked his way to world ranks via the Eureka Athletic Club.

Yoa represented Australia in the men's junior event at the world cross country championships in Edinburgh, Scotland, two years ago.

He has only just entered senior ranks, having turned 20 on Boxing Day.

His coach Rod Griffin, who has also coached and mentored Birming-ham, said it was an outstanding achievement by Yoa to earn selection so quickly after joining the senior ranks.

Griffin said it also was a feather in Ballarat's cap to have two representatives in the team.

They continue a tradition for the city, with Steve Moneghetti flying the Ballarat flag in world cross country championships for more than decade from the mid-1980s.

Shane Nankervis and Lee Troop are others to have contested the world cross country titles.

Yoa has made a meteoric rise in athletics.

He arrived in Australia from Sudan with his family in August, 2002.

It was not until he moved to Ballarat three years ago that he began to take running seriously under the guidance of Griffin.

This will be the fourth time the 25-year-old Birmingham has been to the world cross country championships.

He competed as a junior in 2003 and senior in 2007 and 2008 and as Australia's premier middle distance runner will lead the team to Poland.