Aggies face elite field at Notre Dame during first cross country road trip

Friday, September 30

South Bend, Ind.

1:00 PM

Texas A&M

Notre Dame/Joe Piane Invitational

Sep 29, 2016 | Cross Country

SOUTH BEND, Indiana – An elite field awaits the Aggie cross country team as they venture out on their first road trip of the season. Texas A&M will compete on Friday in the Joe Piane Notre Dame Invitational, which starts at 1 p.m. (CT).

The field competing on the Burke Memorial nine-hole golf course includes 14 nationally-ranked programs. The women's race will cover 5,000-meters while the men race over a five mile distance.

"It will be good for our kids to see some competition from different regions," said Texas A&M assistant coach Wendel McRaven. "We have a tradition of going to Notre Dame and have been there several times and we've done pretty well there.

"We head into this meet knowing it's an important meet for us, but at the same time we have to keep it in perspective since it's still the first month of the season."

On the women's side the elite field includes three of the top five teams in the country with No. 1 Providence, No. 2 New Mexico and No. 5 North Carolina State. Nationally-ranked women's teams also include host Notre Dame (16^th), Vanderbilt (24^th), and Utah (28^th) along with seven schools receiving votes for the national top 30 poll – Weber State, Minnesota, Eastern Michigan, Mississippi, California, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Leading the men's field is No. 9 Eastern Kentucky followed by Wisconsin (12^th), UTEP (18^th), Mississippi (20^th), North Carolina State (23^rd), Washington State (24^th), Florida State (=30^th) and Texas (=30^th). Teams in the field who are receiving national votes include Providence, Southern Utah, Texas A&M and Illinois.

The Aggies will compete against a combination of SEC schools and programs from the South Central region. Conference teams include Alabama, Mississippi and Vanderbilt while region competition will include Baylor, Texas and UT Arlington.

Last year the Texas A&M men placed seventh and were led by Cameron Villarreal, who finished seventh individually. Villarreal returns along with an Aggie squad that includes Austin Wells, Christian Farris and Ryan Teel from the scoring five runners in this meet a year ago.

The men's team includes Colin Stoeber, Jacob Perry and Eli Canal, a trio who raced at Notre Dame last season. Also running for the Aggies are Jon Bishop, Julian Castellano, Taylor Clayton, and Elliott Farris.

"For the men last year was kind of a breakthrough race for us," noted McRaven. "Now we go back with some expectations that we will run well. It gives us an opportunity in late September to kind of see where we stack up.

"The main difference this time is I don't have to tell them as much about Notre Dame and what to expect. Our expectations change a little bit this time since we think we're a pretty good men's team, and if we want to be one of the top 30 teams in the country then we need to beat some of the teams that are considered as one of the top 30 teams in the country."

Aggie senior Karis Jochen has won her first two meets of the season on Texas A&M's Dale Watts course, covering distances of 4,100m and 6,000m, earning SEC Runner of the Week honors for each performance.

"For Karis this is a great opportunity with three of the top five teams in the country racing on the women's side as she races against plenty of returning and future All-Americans," said McRaven. "She's going to be right up there in the mix with some people.

"For our women's team it's an opportunity to get the experience of a race that starts out fast and is run on a tighter course. With more people in the race, they will get used to bumping some elbows and other factors of racing against this level of competition. It will be some good experience, especially for the younger members of the team."

Joining Jochen among the Aggie women's squad are Lauryn Barrientos, Laura Craig, Haley Deakins, Ashley Driscoll, Devin Norton, Kelsey Persyn, Arin Rice, Kelsie Warren and Katie Watson.