Cross Country Schedule Set for Razorbacks

A condensed cross country season will see the return of the Razorbacks in competition this fall, as announced by the conference office last week. Teams can compete in a maximum of four meets, starting on September 11, with the final meet being the SEC Championships, held October 30, as LSU serves as the host school.

“We are thrilled as a program to have a season this fall, and we have a chance to compete,” Arkansas head coach Chris Bucknam said. “It starts to bring our program back to normal again. It’s not quite 100%, without the NCAA Championships, but it’s real close. Certainly, we can work with this regular season schedule and compete for a SEC Championship.

“Now we have a championship meet to prepare for and we are going to zero in on that and move forward. This helps us get our program back up and running again. Then it can catapult us into the winter and spring seasons for indoor and outdoor track.”

Arkansas is scheduled to race over 6,000m at LSU on September 19 in the SEC Preview meet and then compete at an 8,000m distance in the Arturo Barrios Invitational hosted by Texas A&M on October 17.

“We’ll use the first pair of meets to see how we stack up,” Bucknam said. “It will be a little bit different since I haven’t seen these guys race since the SEC Indoor in February. Just having practice is helpful, to see where everybody stands. We take 10 athletes to the SEC Championships in cross country, and we have 14 to 15 athletes trying to make that squad.

“We are not competing at Chile Pepper this year, but we plan on being back in 2021 with a great team and ready to compete in one of the best cross country meets in the country.”

An adjustment from a normal transition of the outdoor season to cross country is gauging previous performances among the team. Since the recent outdoor season was canceled, previous races for the Razorbacks date back to the indoor season when Arkansas won the SEC Indoor championship.

“Looking towards this cross country season, obviously we are missing some benchmarks from spring competition,” Bucknam said. “That’s when we would have been running in the steeplechase, 5,000 and 10,000 meters. Not having those benchmarks is unfortunate, but we can work through it.”

Another alteration to this cross country campaign will be the absence of NCAA events, as neither the NCAA South Central Region or NCAA Championships will be held. Both of those events cover 10,000m distances.

“There are some modifications we will make since we don’t have the two 10k races that we usually have after the SEC meet,” Bucknam noted. “The season is also a little shorter. We usually have a 14-week season, now its 10 weeks.”

As athletes are now back in Fayetteville, practice has resumed along with the normal team bonding which occurs in a training environment.

“It’s great having the team back on campus,” stated Bucknam. “I’m glad we are able to get together, start to run together again and be a team. That’s the thing we missed most, the daily interaction with the athletes and the athlete to athlete interactions, working towards a common goal of winning championships.”

2020 Cross Country Schedule