BATON ROUGE — A berth to the NCAA Championships will be on the line Saturday when the LSU men’s and women’s cross country teams compete at the NCAA South Central Regional Championships in Waco, Texas.
The event, hosted by Baylor University, will take place at the Cottonwood Creek Golf Course. Action will begin at 10 a.m. with the women’s 6K race. The men will follow at 11:15 a.m. with a 10K run.
The top-two teams from each race will earn automatic bids to the national meet. At large and individual selections will be determined based on the performances at the eight other regional sites.
Competition for both the Tigers and Lady Tigers is expected to be stiff. Fifth-ranked Arkansas and 21st-ranked Texas should be the top contenders in the men’s race, while No. 4 Arkansas and Baylor, who is receiving votes in the national rankings, will be the teams to beat in the women’s race.
Arkansas enters the meet at the defending champions on both the men’s and women’s sides. LSU will look to improve on its finishes from a year ago when the men placed sixth and the women were 10th.
The Tigers will lean on senior Drew Haro as they have done all season to pace the young squad. Haro owns LSU’s top 10K time of the year after clocking 30:40.8 at the Chile Pepper Festival.
The Lady Tigers will be led by the junior duo of Rachael Graham and Megan Broussard. The pair has finished as LSU’s No. 1 and No. 2 runners in each of its five races this season, with Graham finishing on top four times and Broussard taking the top spot once.