The Lady Tigers’ fastest runner, Laura Carleton, requested to use her redshirt at an abnormal time.
Carleton, who already used her redshirt season in track, chose to use her redshirt season in cross country during her final year of eligibility — this year. She said she wanted to run her final seasons of track and cross country in her last year at LSU.
“Instead of using up my last year this year, I wanted to wait until next year,” Carleton said. “Hopefully I’ll be faster, and I think our team will be stronger, too, because I’m the oldest on the team so no one is going to be shot.”
LSU coach Mark Elliott said Carleton can make a bigger impact on next year’s team, which he said will be improved from this year’s team.
“Next year with our new recruits and the kids we have here getting better, she’s going to make it a much better team,” Elliott said. “I think Laura could definitely affect the position we finish this year, but I think we could have the team finish the highest it ever has in the conference next