BATON ROUGE, La. – The LSU women’s cross country team is on the road for the first time ever as a team at the NCAA XC Championships, held at Gans Creek XC Course in Columbia, Mo., on Saturday.
The women’s championship race is set to go at 9:20 a.m. CT, while the men’s is scheduled for 10:10 a.m. The cross-country finale will be live streamed on ESPNU at 9:00 a.m. and will be called by John Anderson and Carrie Tollefson.
It comes easy to say that the women’s team that LSU is sending to Columbia is the best in program history. They became the first squad in over 45 years of LSU cross country to head to the big meet together with their second-place finish at the NCAA South Central Regional.
A lot of the LSU success at the NCAA Championships has come under Houston Franks’ tenure. Three of the four women in LSU history to advance to the national meet have been under Franks’ coaching. The previous two seasons, Lorena Rangel Batres (2024) finished 138th and Ella Chesnut (2023) finished 196th running by themselves. The highest finished in LSU history came from Charlotte Mayock when she took 62nd in 1996.
A team effort and gameplan will make it an easier path for the current Tigers to outperform previous LSU finishes as individuals.
At LSU’s first top-two finish at the NCAA regionals, the underclassmen led the way with four of the top five finishers as freshmen and sophomores.
“We’ve been so close the last few years,” said Coach Houston Franks after the regional meet. “Last year we graduated six of our top eight runners and on paper it looked like a little bit of a rebuilding year for us. People just stepped up and it’s the best team we’ve ever had.”
Sophomore Yuya Sawada led LSU to the finish line with a fifth-overall finish and a time of 19:56.7. Her fifth-place finish at regionals was second best in program history behind her current teammate Ella Chesnut.
The second Tiger through the line at regionals was freshman Abigael Chemnagei, clocking in at 20:22.8 to finish 11th overall. Her finish ranks fourth in LSU history by placement and sixth overall by individual.
Edna Chepkemoi stayed inside the top 20 throughout the whole race, sitting as high as fourth through the first 1.6k, and finished 15th overall with a time of 20:29.4 to fill the third spot for the Tigers.
The fourth spot was filled by another freshman for LSU as Micaela Villarreal finished 20th overall with a time of 20:47.2 and closing the scorers for the history-making group was senior Ella Chesnut, who finished in 36th with a time of 21:27.0.
Needless to say, this young and talented squad will be looking to shock the field on Saturday.
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