WACO - Racing in the NCAA South Central region meet at the Cottonwood Creek Golf Course on Saturday, the Texas A&M cross country team will seek both team and individual berths to the NCAA Championships.
The men's 10,000-meter race starts at 10 a.m. while the women's 6,000-meter race begins at 11:15 a.m. The Cottonwood Creek course is located at 5200 Bagby Avenue in Waco. Spectator parking is available in the adjacent Waco ISD football stadium lot.
Pre-meet predictions have the Texas and Arkansas men claiming the two automatic spots for the NCAA Championships by placing first and second at the South Central Region meet. Texas A&M is tabbed to finish third while also claiming one of the 13 at-large positions for the national championship meet.
The nationally-ranked Aggies, No. 24, enter the region meet ranked No. 3 in the South Central behind Texas (No. 11) and Arkansas (No. 15). Texas A&M last qualified a team for the NCAA Championships in 2008 when they won the South Central region title after placing fourth at the Big 12 meet.
"The men have been racing consistently well all season, with our best team performance coming at the Big 12 meet," said A&M assistant coach Wendel McRaven. "At this point all we need to do is to continue to race like we have all season. Doing that, I am confident that we will put ourselves in a great position to qualify for nationals."
Individually, Texas A&M's Henry Lelei will be one of the favorites for the men's title as the race distance increases from the 8,000 meters teams have run during the past month.
Lelei, who placed third at the Big 12 Championships and earned Newcomer of the Year honors, will contend with Texas frosh Craig Lutz, SEC champion Eric Fernandez of Arkansas, Wesley Ruttoh of Houston, and Patrick Kimeli of A&M-Corpus Christi for the top individual finisher in the region.
Fernandez placed fourth in the South Central race last season five seconds ahead of Ryan Dohner of Texas while Kimeli finished seventh. Matt Johnson of Lamar, placed ninth, and is another top 10 finisher who returns.
In the women's race Texas (No. 14) and Arkansas (No. 17) are also predicted to take the top two automatic positions to the NCAA Championship field. Both teams placed second in their respective conference meets. The Aggie women head into the region meet ranked No. 6 in the South Central after placing sixth in the Big 12 meet.
Last season the A&M women placed fifth in team scoring at the region meet and advanced a pair of individuals to the NCAA Championship field. Tara Upshaw placed 10th in the region meet while Natosha Rogers finished 11th.
The top four individual finishers, not associated with the top two teams, qualify for the NCAA Championship field.
Contenders for the women's NCAA individual qualifying positions include Conference USA champion Silje Fjortoft of SMU, Becky Wade of Rice, Lauren Smith of SFA and A&M-Corpus Christi's Kristine Burciaga.
Rogers recently led the Aggies during the conference meet as she earned All-Big 12 honors with a 12th place effort. Katherine Devlin, who has led the team a couple of times this season, could also contend for an individual NCAA qualifying position. She was second to Rogers on the A&M squad at the conference meet, placing 24th.
"The women are starting to put things together," noted McRaven. "I think we have a couple individuals with realistic shots at contending for individual qualifying positions for nationals. As a team, I want to see continued growth from our race at Big 12s."
A nine-member A&M women's team includes Itzel Cetina, Shawn Dalglish, Grace Fletcher, Hillary Montgomery, Haley Parsons and Kate Mohr in addition to Devlin, Rogers and Upshaw.
Eight Aggies will comprise the men's team. Kevin Burnett, who placed 15th in the region meet a year ago, joins Lelei along with Will Barry, C.J. Brown, Stephen Curry, James Hodges, MacLean O'Donnell and Isaac Spencer.
Performing well earlier in the season when racing against teams from various regions will aid the Aggie men if they are in position for an at-large team selection to the NCAA Championships.
Teams that Texas A&M bettered at Notre Dame and Wisconsin include Columbia (Northeast), Florida (South) and North Carolina (Southeast), who are each ranked No. 2 in their respective regions.
There is another set of four teams who are ranked No. 3 in various regions who could benefit the Aggies more if they place second in the upcoming region meets. Those schools include Eastern Kentucky (Southeast), Georgia (South), Georgetown (Mid-Atlantic) and Syracuse (Northeast).
In facing Texas twice this season, at Wisconsin and during the Big 12 meet, the Aggies closed the gap significantly in the second meeting. In the Wisconsin Invitational the Longhorns placed sixth while A&M tied Oregon for 14th. The gap in time between the two teams was one minute, 23 seconds as Texas had two finishers ahead of A&M's top runner and also had five runners complete the course ahead of the Aggies No. 3 finisher.
During the conference meet, where Texas finished third and the Aggies were fourth, the time gap shrunk to 67 seconds as the teams were separated by 15 points. A&M's top runner, Lelei, finished one position ahead of the Longhorns' top finisher, Lutz. Then only two positions separated the next pair of runners for each team with Texas holding the slight edge with both finishers.
REGION RANKINGS
South Central Men (national ranking)
1. Texas (11)
2. Arkansas (15)
3. Texas A&M (24)
4. Lamar
5. UTSA
6. Houston
7. Rice
8. Arkansas-Little Rock
9. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
10. Stephen F. Austin
South Central Women
1. Texas (14)
2. Arkansas (17)
3. SMU
4. Rice
5. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
6. Texas A&M
7. UTSA
8. Lamar
9. Texas State
10. North Texas