The Abilene Christian cross country team will be in College Station to run in the Arturo Barrios Invitational, hosted by Texas A&M on Friday morning.
This is one of the largest collegiate XC fields in Texas – with 38 teams entered, exactly the number of teams that were entered last year when ACU placed 27th in the men's race. Then-freshman
Andruw Villa finishing in 19th place in a time of 23:11 on the 8K course – the fastest XC time over the 8,000-meter distance in ACU history. The women finished 35th in last year's race.
The ACU men's team moved up to the #13 spot in the most recent USTFCCCA South Central Region poll. Maintaining that position or climbing higher in the poll will be very possible as there are 12 teams from the South Central poll running in College Station. Besides host Texas A&M (currently in the #3 spot in the poll), the field includes Incarnate Word (#5), Stephen F. Austin (#6), Arkansas State (#7), TCU (#8), Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (#9), Houston (#10), Rice (#11), and LSU (#12). Just behind the Wildcats are fellow WAC teams UT Arlington (#14) and Tarleton State (#15). Just out of the current Top-15 are Lamar and Sam Houston State, both of who were ranked in the Top-15 earlier in the season.
Running for the women in College Station are
Chloe McLellan,
Hannah Kasper,
Kyla Fuller,
Hadley Phillips,
Saylor Stevenson,
Kate Williams,
Madison Anderson,
Audrey Chitwood, and
Alyssa Quinones. Going to the starting line for the men will be
Andruw Villa,
Kevin Castruita,
Carlos Cortez,
Mark Barajas,
Vincent Luffey, Benji Castro,
Mikhail Fortner and
Austin Roberts.
The men's 8K race will start at 8:30 a.m. on Friday and the women's 6K race follows at 9:15 a.m. The race will be run on the Watts Cross Country course on the Texas A&M campus.
Â
