The central theme for the LSU cross country teams this weekend is the extra motivation of running at home.The Tigers and Lady Tigers play host Saturday to the 2009 LSU Invitational, which will be held at Highland Road Park. LSU will have a three-week break following Saturday’s meet.Saturday will mark the only home event for the LSU cross country teams this season.”We travel pretty far away for most of our meets,” said sophomore Laura Carleton, who paced the Lady Tigers in last season’s LSU invitational with an 18th-place time of 24 minutes, 13.7 seconds. “It’s the one time all your family and friends are there, and it’s cool to have that support since most of our team is from Louisiana.”Sophomore Cullen Doody said he isn’t worried about what the other teams are bringing to the event. He said the teams aren’t worried about the competition and are more focused on what they can control.”I just want to run a better time than I ran last season,” Doody said. “A lot of people have friends and family out there, so there’s a little extra motivation running in front of people you know.”The Tigers will look to duplicate their recent success at the Invitational. The 2008 Tigers took first place in the event, their best outing of the season. The Lady Tigers also fared well at the event when they placed fifth, also their best team finish of the season.But the Tigers’ top three finishers in last season’s LSU invitational will not race in the 2009 event. Andy Florek, Richard Chautin and Jacob Simmons finished fifth, sixth and seventh respectively.Florek and Chautin redshirted this season, and Simmons is no longer on the roster. “We can’t focus on what we don’t have,” said LSU coach Mark Elliott. “We’ll have some success just by knowing the course. We train on the course every day.”The Tigers will try to erase the bad taste from their last performance at the Crimson Classic, in Tuscaloosa, Ala.. The Tigers placed 10th out of a 16-team field.”Coming off a week when the guys thought they should’ve ran better, there are a lot of things for them to think about to keep them motivated and doing well,” Elliott said.Doody paced the Tigers for the event with a 26-minute, 52.30-second time in the 8K event, which was good for 44th place out of 129 runners.The Lady Tigers put forth a solid effort in Tuscaloosa. Senior Katie Hamel, sophomore Jenna Henssler and freshman Charlene Lipsey placed in the top-35 runners at the Crimson Classic. Hamel placed 21st after she ran the 5K course in 18 minutes, 43.50 seconds, which prompted Elliott to say Hamel ran “extremely well.””I expect them to improve a little bit on what we did in the last meet,” Elliott said. “Any mistakes they made in the last race, they need to correct for this race.”- – – -Contact Luke Johnson at [email protected]