BATON ROUGE — LSU men’s cross country runner DC Lipani has been named the Southeastern Conference Men’s Freshman Cross Country Runner of the Week after helping to lead the Tigers to a third-place team finish at McNeese State’s Cowboy Stampeded in Lake Charles on Saturday.
Lipani clocked a four-mile time of 20 minutes, 46.8 seconds for a 23rd-place finish to finish as one of the top Tigers in the competition.
Lipani is the first freshman for Tigers in LSU’s modern history to be named SEC Freshman Cross Country Runner of the Week, and the most recent male to earn SEC weekly honors since Drew Haro was named SEC Men’s Athlete of the Week in 2005.
The SEC Freshman Runner of the Week is the first SEC honor for the LSU cross country teams since Sept. 25, 2012, when Laura Carleton received SEC Women’s Runner of the Week.
The Mandeville native has been a key contributor for the Tigers this season. Lipani placed 23rd out of 74 finishers at the Cowboy Stampede and helped the Tigers earn their first win of the season with his top-10 finish at the LSU Invitational clocking 16:01.67.
Lipani made his collegiate debut as a true freshman with the Tigers at the Rice Invitational, finishing the 6k course with a time of 18:41.