ABILENE – Abilene Christian's cross country teams are in Lake Charles, La., for Friday's Southland Conference Men's and Women's Cross Country Championships, which will take place at the Enos Derbonne Sports Complex.
The women's race will begin at 8:30 a.m. CT while the men's start time is set for 9:30 a.m. Both races will stream via
Facebook Live.
Jarvis Jelen Pre-Race Interview
The Wildcats return to this meet with just one returning all-conference performer (
Carnley Graham) from a year ago, during which the women won their second league title in three years while the men posted its best showing since rejoining the conference (seventh place). But despite the loss of key runners
Ryan Cleary, Diana García Muñoz and Allie and
Michaela Hackett, ACU head cross country coach
Jarvis Jelen believes the fields are wide open.
"Both the men's and women's races will be tight battles," said the third-year coach. "The women don't have as many schools to challenge up there but it's still a really good group and kind of wide open. Our depth in the fifth spot might hurt us a little, but if we have someone step up anything's possible because the first five or six positions are interchangeable.
"The men's race is more difficult (to predict). You have schools like Lamar up front who is the favorite year-to-year and UIW has a great senior-led team and a lot of depth. Those two schools have put themselves in position to probably be the top two in the conference, but to be honest the No. 3 to 10 spots are up for grabs. More and more schools are taking cross country seriously. There's a lot of parity here and it's going to come down to who goes out there on the day and does well."
Lamar – on the men's side – won its fifth-straight title last season. It was the team's 16th overall and 11th in the last 12 years.
ACU's men's team has been led most of the season by freshman
Kevin Kipkosgei, who posted three-consecutive top-five finishes at ACU, Texas Tech and Texas A&M, before missing the race at Incarnate Word earlier this month due to injury. He's still a little banged up according to Jelen, but is still expected to compete up front.
"We're not at full strength (on the men's side) coming in," said Jelen," but once again I feel like we'll put up our best performance of the season. We're ready to put our nose in it early. We have to be aggressive, and that's something we've been working on all this season. The guys are ready physically and mentally to get in there and go for it, and not play it safe. We want to be seen challenging teams for one of those spots in the top half of the conference."
The remainder of ACU's men's roster is composed of freshmen
Levi Chambers and
Grant O'Neil, sophomores
Seth Crockett and
Conner Miller, junior
Drew Cummings and senior
Travis Nichols. Chambers was the Wildcats' lead runner Oct. 6 at UIW, finishing the 8K course in 27:12.0, for which he earned an honorable mention for Southland Conference Runner of the Week.
Junior
Carnley Graham, who placed sixth at last year's championship meet in Abilene and is a winner of two races this season, should be one of the odds on favorite to win the individual title according to Jelen.
"Carnley has a good a shot as anyone," he said. "She's as fit as she's ever been and keeps getting stronger and stronger. Mentally, she is in a good place and is ready to go out there and challenge for the win."
Graham will be joined by sophomores
Hannah Marut,
Soren Underwood,
Briahna Gerlach and
Aubrey Young, plus newcomers
Allison Taylor,
Loren Rivera and
Chase Nolan. This group finished second to Texas Tech at the season-opening meet, placed eighth of 13 schools at Texas A&M, and defeated the Cardinals by two points in winning the UIW Invitational team championship.
"The women's team is solid," said Jelen. "They also are an extremely young team, and I'm really excited for the girls who are running. They are poised to have our best performance of the season at conference and will have a great showing if they put up a good fight."
