Women's XC Hits the Road for Third Race of Season

Toledo, OH - The Toledo women's cross country team will run in its second-consecutive elite invitational, as nine varsity runners travel to South Bend, IN on Friday, Sept. 30 to compete in the Notre Dame Invitational. The Rockets will run in the in the Blue Division race, with the gun scheduled to go off at 4:15 p.m.

Other runners will be competing in the Lakefront Invitational in Chicago, IL on Saturday, Oct. 1.

The competition in the Notre Dame Invitational is stacked, as the 28-team field will include top teams from around the country, including six nationally-ranked teams and two others receiving votes nationally. The ranked teams are No. 2 New Mexico; No. 7 Florida State; No. 18 Arkansas; No. 22 Princeton; No. 28 Penn State and No. 29 BYU. Toledo and Clemson are the other schools receiving national votes.

Toledo will be facing off against three teams - Arkansas, Baylor and Ohio State - for the second week in a row, as they also competed in Toledo's Inter-Regional Bubble Buster at Ottawa Park on Sept. 23.

UT scored 115 points to place fifth in the Bubble Buster, behind Arkansas, West Virginia, San Francisco and Columbia. The team were paced by senior Emma Kertesz, who finished 11th with a time of 13:44.8.

The Notre Dame Invitational will present the Rockets with another opportunity to measure themselves against top teams from around the country.

"There are going to be a lot of good teams running at Notre Dame, including Arkansas, who we saw last week," Hadsell said. "We want to use them as a gauge to see how much we're improving each week and how much better we are over 5,000 meters or 6,000 meters as opposed to a 4K.

"We need to beat some of these ranked teams head-to-head to earn points towards a bid to the NCAA Championships."

The "Rocket Roadtrip" will continue from South Bend, IN to Chicago, IL, as the next 15 girls on the team will run in the Lakefront Invitational the following day.

"It will be a good race to see how many runners we can get to finish with times between the 17:30 to 18:30 range," Hadsell said.

The UT women's team will compete next at the Wisconsin Adidas Invitational on Oct. 14.

Contact: Brad Pettiford
E-Mail: brad.pettiford@utoledo.edu