MANHATTAN, Kan. - Coming off a meet which saw the women’s team finish first, the cross country teams are back in action this weekend hosting the Wildcat Invitational at Stateland Cross Country Fairgrounds in Topeka, Kan. The meet gets started bright and early at 8:15 a.m. with the women’s race, followed by the men at 9:00 a.m.

Coach Smith hopes that both the men’s and women’s squads can improve off their performances from last week.

“We want to be a notch above last weekend’s performance,” commented Smith. “As for the women’s we need to be competing to try to win. We are going to be competing against more talented teams in Oklahoma State and Oklahoma. We can’t just show up and expect to win. We are going to have to run harder. We are bringing Shauna Burrell in this week, so I think we are going to have a better lineup than what we did last week.”

The men, after finishing third at last week’s meet, hope to bolster their lineup with the season opener of last year’s number one runner Mathew Chesang.

“On the men’s side, we introduce Mathew Chesang, so we will get better there. However, our 3-7 need to kind of find themselves a little bit. I would expect them to raise their game since the competition is getting better,” Smith said.

Not only will K-State be able to test out the course for the Big 12 Championships, Coach Smith will also be able to check out some of the competition they will see October 30th.

“I will look at the Big 12 competition to a certain extent. We can only control what our people do. I want to see where we are in relevance to the other schools. We are going there to try to beat them. We want to go out and beat people and see how we do compared to the other schools in the conference.”

If this week’s practice is any measuring stick of how well the team will do this weekend, look for K-State to have success.

“They really challenged themselves, and I hope that translates into success this weekend.”

K-StateSports Cross Country

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