Defending champion Razorbacks among three nationally ranked teams in SEC meet
No. 6 Arkansas enters the SEC Cross Country Championships as defending champions, having claimed a conference record 26th title last year. The SEC Championships, with the men’s 8,000m race hosted by Missouri and held on the Gans Creek course, will air live on the SEC Network at 10 a.m. this Friday, Oct. 29.
“We have a well-seasoned team, but other schools will reap the same benefit from the covid year,” noted Razorbacks men’s head coach Chris Bucknam. “We’re looking forward to going up to Columbia, racing to see what we’re made of and to see if we’re good enough to be conference champs.”
Recently, Arkansas placed third in Florida State’s Pre-National Invitational behind defending national champion Northern Arizona and matching the score of runner-up Colorado, and then moved to No. 6 in the national rankings.
Arkansas is one of three nationally ranked schools in the conference, along with No. 22 Alabama and No. 28 Ole Miss.
“We have a tough row to hoe in the SEC Championships, because there are a lot of great athletes in our league,” said Bucknam. “Certainly, Ole Miss and Alabama are formidable opponents. We have to be good on that day if we are going to beat them.”
Since 2012, when the league expanded with the addition of Missouri and Texas A&M, Arkansas has claimed seven of the past nine titles, with a second and third place finish the other two years.
Ole Miss won a pair of titles in 2018 and 2019 during that span while also finishing second three times and third twice. Alabama has placed third twice, in 2017 and 2019.
Razorback Amon Kemboi led the squad in Tallahassee, placing 10th. Earlier in the season Gilbert Boit and Kemboi finished with the same time, placing 1-2, in Boston College’s Battle in Beantown with Arkansas claiming the team title.
“We got our feet wet at Pre-Nationals and that was the goal for that meet, to get into some really tough competition and harden our shell a little bit, mentally and physically, to compete going forward for these two championships, the SEC meet and then the NCAA Championships,” noted Bucknam.
Boit, the 2018 SEC Champion, and Kemboi, who led the team in 2020 in placing fifth at the SEC meet, are two of five Razorbacks returning from Arkansas’ top seven in last year’s conference meet. They are joined by Jacob McLeod, Emmanuel Cheboson and Andrew Kibet.
Cheboson and Kibet alternated as the third and fourth Razorback finishers during the Boston College meet, placing fifth and sixth, and the Pre-National Invitational, finishing 27th and 31st. McLeod, the third Razorback finisher in the 2020 SEC meet, was the fifth Razorback in Boston and sixth during the Pre-National meet.
Myles Richter and Ryan Murphy were part of the Razorback’s top seven in 2019, placing second and fourth among the squad with Richter 18th overall and Murphy 27th. They were the eighth and ninth UA finishers in 2020 with Murphy placing 22nd and Richter 23rd.
Richter led Arkansas this season with runner-up finishes in the Missouri Opener on the Gans Creek course and Chile Pepper Festival. Then he was the fifth Razorback, placing 44th overall, in the Pre-National Invitational.
Also racing for the Razorbacks in the conference meet are Josh Shearer and Elias Schreml. Shearer has contested a pair of SEC meets while this will be the debut for Schreml.
National Rankings
- Arkansas
- Alabama
- Mississippi
Regional Rankings
South Central | 1. Arkansas, 4. LSU, 5. Texas A&M
South | 2. Alabama, 3. Mississippi, 7. Tennessee, 9. Florida, 12. Georgia, 14. Auburn, 15. Vanderbilt
Southeast | 7. Kentucky
