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BYU Faces Toughest Competition of Season at Pre Nationals
Event to be held in Cedar Falls, Iowa Saturday.
Oct. 14, 2003 PROVO, Utah - The BYU men's and women's cross country teams will face off against their toughest competition so far this season as they head to Cedar Falls, Iowa Saturday for NCAA Pre Nationals. No. 1 BYU women's cross country team looks to defend their national rank as they run against 71 top teams. This will be the women's first opportunity to race against top competition like No. 3 Arizona and No. 5 Notre Dame. Running for the Cougars in the seeded race will be junior Lisa Antonelli, freshman Amber Harper, redshirt freshman Suzanna Larsen, senior All-American Michaela Mannova, sophomore All-American Breanne Sandberg and in their first races of the season sophomore All-American Kassi Andersen and junior All-American Laura Turner. "This will be the first opportunity we will have had this year to run our entire team in its strength," head coach Patrick Shane said. "With the addition of Kassi and Laura to our competing team we will finally have the chance to get everyone on the same page." Andersen comes into the season after having placed 7th in last years NCAA Cross Country Championships and setting a new NCAA record at the 2003 Outdoor NCAA Track and Field Championships in the steeplechase. Turner will be coming off a redshirt season after returning home from an LDS mission to Geneva, Switzerland. The women's team will also be running a B team in the open race consisting of Tia Babble, juniors Anika Busby, Jami Caldwell, Katie Moon and Rena Williams. The No. 4 men's team will compete against 73 teams and look to improve their ranking while qualifying for Nationals on Nov. 24. Saturday's meet will be the first opportunity for the Cougars to race against No. 3 Northern Arizona. "This weekend will be a great opportunity to lock horns with some other teams that we haven't seen yet like NAU and solidify our spot in the top four in the nation," men's head coach Ed Eyestone said. Running for the men's team will be the same top seven who competed at the Roy Griak Invitational three weeks ago: juniors Kip Kangogo, Brian Lindsay, Matt Adams, Nathan Robison and Nick McCombs, sophomore Chad Durham and freshman Rich Nelson. "Besides this race having excellent competition it is also a great opportunity to check out the course," Eyestone said "Nationals is the most important race of the year and so we will have a chance to see the course that we will be running on come November when we come back to Iowa for NCAA's."
The Cougars will run on the Irv Warren Memorial Golf Course at Byrnes Park. The men will run a 10K and the women will run a 6K. More information about NCAA Pre Nationals and Nationals can be found at http://www.unipanthers.com/athletics/pages/mcc/ncaa/index.asp.
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