BATON ROUGE — After opening the season with solid performances at the Tulane Invitational last week, the LSU men’s and women’s cross country teams will return to action Saturday at the Lobo Invitational in Albuquerque.
Billed as one on the biggest cross country events in the state of New Mexico, LSU will have its hands full as 13 teams are scheduled to descend upon the UNM Golf Course for the women’s 6K race that begins at 10:20 a.m. (CST) and the men’s 8K race that follows at 10:50 a.m.
“The competition at this meet will be a lot stiffer then what we faced last week at Tulane,” said LSU cross country coach Mark Elliott. “This meet will give us a good idea where we stack up nationally against some of the better teams in the country.”
Headlining the list of competitors is No. 23 Colorado State, Texas Tech, UTEP, host New Mexico and cross-state rival New Mexico State.
Saturday’s race will mark the season debut for many of the LSU cross country runners as both the Tigers and Lady Tigers held out many of their top athletes for the season opener in New Orleans a week ago.
“We expect to have our best team, at this point in the season, out there running,” said Elliott.
Elliott will look to juniors Jimmy Wiggins and Katie Denton to pace the Tigers and Lady Tigers, respectively. Wiggins sat out the 2002 cross country campaign, but had a solid year on the track, posting the LSU’s eighth-best 10K time in school history. Denton was the Lady Tigers’ top finisher at the NCAA Regionals a year ago.