Cross Country in Fayetteville for NCAA South Central Regional Championship
BATON ROUGE, La. – The LSU cross country team is on the road for the second meet of the 2025 postseason as they take on the NCAA South Central Regional Championships at Agri Park in Fayetteville, Ark., on Friday.
The women’s race is set to go at 9:00 a.m. CT, while the men’s is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. The LSU men will not be bringing their full team for the meet and will be unable to score as a team. There will not be a live stream of the event.
LSU’s women are possibly entering this meet in the best form we’ve seen in program history. Hot off a fourth-place finish at the SEC Championships, tying an LSU best finish that has only been replicated once in 1999, the Tigers are hoping for a top-two finish that would automatically spring them into the NCAA Championships.
Recently the Tigers have finished in third and fourth as a team the past three seasons under Coach Houston Franks. The LSU program has yet to earn a top-two spot in its storied history, but they enter this meet ranked as the No. 1 team in the South-Central region for the first time ever. Tulane (No. 2 in region) and Texas A&M (No. 3) will be in pursuit for the same as the two biggest rivals for the Tigers. If the team doesn’t crack the top two at the meet, they will look to earn one of the 13 at-large bids that will be announced Saturday at 4 p.m. by the NCAA DI Cross Country Subcommittee on NCAA.com.
At the 2024 women’s regional LSU took fourth with a total of 110 points behind Arkansas, Texas and Tulane. The meet saw Lorena Rangel Batres emerge as a top talent in the regional as she finished sixth overall and earned a spot in the NCAA Championship by herself.
Senior Ella Chesnut is the lone returner from the 2024 scorers, but the Tigers have more depth this season and an array of options when it comes to who will lead the pack at the meet. Sophomore Edna Chepkemoi and freshman Abigael Chemnagei have both ranked nationally individually throughout the season in the top 30, while sophomore Yuya Sawada has made a leap from last season and has been one of the most valuable assets for LSU in 2025.
It is also not worth forgetting that Chesnut was a top finisher from regionals a couple years ago as she auto-qualified for the NCAA Championships individually in 2023.
The top four names have been helped on the back end by freshman Micaela Villarreal. The three-time state champion out of Texas in high school has held her own as a scorer for LSU in all four meets she has competed in, even leading LSU in the season opener as she finished third overall at the Battle for New Orleans.
On the men’s side, only four Tigers will compete as they hope to qualify for the NCAA Championships as individuals. The four Tigers that traveled for the meet are Casey Goetschel, Hugh Carlson, Trenton Sandler and Emedy Kiplimo.
The first four regional finishers not from an automatic qualifying or at-large team also secure an auto-bid to the championships.
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