Razorbacks eager to race at home in Chile Pepper Festival

FAYETTEVILLE – No. 10 Arkansas competes at 5 p.m. on Friday in the 33^rd annual Chile Pepper Festival over a 5,000m course at Agri Park. A field of 79 teams are scheduled to compete amid a pair of races with 12 nationally ranked programs involved among Division I, Division II and NJCAA schools entered.

“Our kids have always loved running at home,” said Arkansas women’s head coach Lance Harter. “The Chile Pepper Festival continues to surprise me. We have 79 teams on the women’s side just in the college race. We’ll run on Friday with two races, with us in the later race. The competition will include some really good individuals and some good solid teams.

“The whole tactical plan was to make sure we get challenged. Hopefully, that will come true on Friday where some of our developmental runners see what this level of competition is all about and then some of our lead runners get a chance to be up front and dictate some tactics.”

A free live stream of the races will be available through runnerspace.com at the following link: Chile Pepper Festival. Live results are available through this flashresults.com link: Chile Pepper Results.

In addition to the Razorbacks, the other Division I nationally ranked school is No. 14 Oklahoma State. Division II programs nationally ranked include No. 2 Colorado School of Mines, No. 4 Augustana (South Dakota), No. 6 Southwest Baptist, and No. 27 Western Colorado.

Among the junior colleges entered, No. 2 Iowa Western is part of the field for the 5 p.m. race. Other nationally ranked junior colleges in the first race, starting at 3:45 p.m., include No. 9 Cloud County, No. 10 Ranger, No. 18 Butler, No. 20 Coffeyville, and No. 24 Hastings.

Among the Razorbacks scheduled to race on Friday, the crew will include Krissy Gear, Logan Jolly, Julia Paternain, Carmie Prinsloo and Gracie Hyde.

“This week we will end up increasing our line-up a bit, rather than running a lesser competitive crew, partly because of circumstances to ultimately get ready for Pre-Nationals in a couple of weeks and four weeks from now the SEC Championships,” noted Harter.

“When I talked to some of our upperclassmen about an opportunity to go to Notre Dame and race against some great competition on the same weekend, they were unanimous in wanting to stay home and race in the Chile Pepper Festival.”