BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s and women’s cross country teams will face their biggest challenge of the season this Saturday when they travel to Fayetteville, Ark., for the 17th annual Chile Pepper Invitational.
Widely regarded as one of the premier cross country festivals in the nation, the 2005 edition should not disappoint. The women will battle 48 teams over a 6K course, while the men are slated for head-to-head competition with 33 teams as they navigate their first 10K race of the season.
The competition will be some of the toughest in the nation as No. 1 Arkansas, No. 6 Arizona, No. 11 UTEP and No. 31 Alabama will be among the men’s competitors and No. 12 Arkansas, No. 14 Baylor and No. 16 Oklahoma State highlight the women’s field.
“Outside of the SEC Championships this is the stiffest competition we will face this year,” said LSU cross country coach Mark Elliott. “This course is a very good indicator of how fit and ready to compete you are. Between that and the talent of the competition I believe we’ll really be able to see what kind of team we have.”
Both the Tigers and Lady Tigers are coming off solid showings at the Auburn Invitational a week ago as the men turned in a season best fifth-place finish and the women placed 13th overall.
In that meet the Tigers were led by reigning SEC Athlete of the Week, Drew Haro, who turned in LSU’s first top-15 performance of the year after crossing the finish line with a Tiger season-best of 24:26.34.
He should be helped by seniors Patrick Gavin and Sam Mwape as well as sophomore Michael Hendry and junior James Presley this weekend.
On the women’s side the Lady Tigers will look to senior Michelle Hymel and junior Kate Accardo to help pace the squad. Hymel was LSU’s top finisher at the Auburn Invitational, while Accardo led the team at the season-opening Lobo Invitational.
Action from Agri Park begins at 9:30 a.m. with the men’s race, while the women will follow at 10:30 a.m.
After the Chile Pepper Festival, both the Tigers and Lady Tigers will take a week off before returning to action at the SEC Championships, Oct. 29, in Columbia, S.C.