BATON ROUGE — The Tiger and Lady Tiger cross country teams play host to their only home meet of the season this Saturday when they welcome 11 teams from throughout the south to Highland Road Park for the LSU Invitational. The women’s 6K race will kickoff action at 8 a.m. (CST), while the men’s 8K run will follow at 9 a.m.
The meet’s field will include several in-state schools in Tulane, Southeastern Louisiana, New Orleans, McNeese State, UL-Monroe, UL-Lafayette, Loyola and Dillard as well as West Florida, South Alabama and Alcorn State.
“I think this will be a very competitive meet,” said LSU cross country coach Mark Elliott. “We have some high caliber teams coming in, but I feel we have a shot to win the men’s race and finish in the top three in the women’s race.”
LSU looks to match and exceed the results from this meet a year ago as the Tigers captured the team title and the Lady Tigers finished second in the final team standings.
The Tigers, ranked 14th in the South Central Region, are coming off three consecutive weeks of top-five finishes as they opened the season with a second-place showing at the Tulane Invitational and then followed it up with fifth-place finishes at both the Lobo Invitational and the Bulldog Stampede.
The men will likely be led by senior Jimmy Wiggins, who despite only having run in one race this season, owns LSU’s top 8K time of the season (25:25) after finishing 13th overall at the Lobo Invitational.
The Lady Tigers enter the LSU Invitational on the heels of eighth-place finish at the Bulldog Stampede. The women will eye the top of the team standings this week as four of the Lady Tigers rank among the SEC’s top 10 in the 6K. Junior Katie Denton leads the way with the conference’s sixth-best mark (24:15.00), while sophomore Michelle Hymel (25:36.00), freshman Jennifer Radecker (25:50.00) and senior Katrina Flanders (26:18.00) own the eighth, ninth and tenth-best marks, respectively.
Following the LSU Invitational the Tigers and Lady Tigers will take a week off before returning to the road and traveling to Auburn, Ala., for the Auburn Invitational, Oct. 10.