Razorbacks among 5 nationally ranked teams in Pre-Nationals
CHARLOTTESVILLE – Arkansas races on the Panorama Farms course that will host the NCAA Championships in November on Saturday among a field of 42 teams, which includes four other top 30 nationally ranked teams in addition to the No. 19 Razorbacks.
Additional nationally ranked teams competing in the Pre-Nationals hosted by Virginia include No. 6 BYU, No. 7 Virginia, No. 17 Oregon, and No. 24 Utah Valley.
“We had a pretty good performance at Chile Pepper, obviously there are some things we want to tweak and fine tune going into the month of October with SECs coming up in two weeks,” stated Arkansas women’s distance coach Megan Elliott.
“We’ll see some changes this week as we compete against BYU, Virginia, and Oregon, who are ranked ahead of us. The team is excited about seeing some other ranked teams and see if we can knock off a ranked team ahead of us or how close we can get to those programs.”
All nine cross country regions have a least one top 15 regionally ranked program in the race with a total of 33 of the 42 programs in the field.
Additional teams include the following, separated by region:
| Great Lakes | Michigan (5), Ohio (7), Purdue (11) |
| Mid-Atlantic | Penn (2), Pittsburgh (4), Villanova (5), Maryland (9) |
| Midwest | Minnesota (4), Missouri (9), Kansas State (12), Kansas (15) |
| Mountain | BYU (3), Utah Valley (5), Montana State (10), Wyoming (11), Weber State (13) |
| Northeast | Dartmouth (10), Yale (12), UMass Lowell (15) |
| South | Tennessee (6) |
| South Central | Arkansas (1) |
| Southeast | Virginia (2), Wake Forest (6), Elon (7), Virginia Tech (9), Liberty (10) |
| West | Oregon (5), Cal Poly (10), Washington State (11) |
Race Schedule (ET)
8:45 a.m. | Men’s 8k Orange Race (B Race)
9:40 a.m. | Men’s 8k Blue Race (Championship Race)
10:30 a.m. | Women’s 6k Blue Race (Championship Race)
11:00 a.m. | Women’s 6k Orange Race (B Race)
“It’s very important to get on the course and for our team to see it,” said Elliott. “It’s a true cross country course, so it’s got some pretty good hills and there are a lot of turns in it. Just that technical aspect of knowing where we need to make our moves and maybe just hang on in certain places.
“That’s really crucial for us, especially with this young group. Laura Taborda is our senior, and the sole senior racing. She does have some previous experience on the course, but she is the only one on the team who has run this course. We’ll make a lot of mental notes for when we come back in November.”
For the first time this season Arkansas will race over a 6,000m distance. In November, the NCAA Championships will also cover a distance of 6,000m. The Razorbacks opened with a 3,000m race at Oklahoma State in early September and then ran 5,000m on the Arkansas home course at Agri Park during the Chile Pepper Festival.
“Paityn (Noe) and Sydney (Thorvaldson) are strong up front, and we have a pod of three or four who are pretty tight as well falling in behind them,” noted Elliott. “We’re going to work on closing our gap down from 1 to 5. That’s one of our key things we’re going to be working on this weekend at Pre-Nationals.”
