The LSU men’s and women’s cross country teams each ended their seasons Friday at the NCAA South Central Regional meet in Fayetteville, Ark., finishing in 18th and 8th place respectively.

Both teams failed to place in the top-2 automatic qualifying spots for the NCAA Championships next week.

LSU coach Mark Elliott hoped the Lady Tigers would finish in the top-3 teams, but after junior Natoya Goule was forced to withdraw from the race with back issues, the Lady Tigers stood little chance to meet his goal, Elliott said.

Senior Laura Carleton, the Lady Tigers’ top performer all season, was hoping to continue her season by qualifying as an individual runner for next week’s NCAA Championships.

But Carleton was unable to land one of the qualifying positions, finishing in 20th place.

Overall, the women had one of the best seasons in his tenure, Elliott said.

“We had a decent shot at making it to nationals as a team, and Laura had a great shot, but it just didn’t work out,” Elliott said.

The men were led by sophomore Phillip Primeaux with an 82nd place finish.

Friday was Primeaux’s first finish as the Tigers’ top runner, setting a personal best time of 33:31.29 in the 10k race.

Senior Roger Cooke, who had finished as the Tigers’ top finisher in every other race this season, was the Tigers’ second finisher, posting a 94th place finish.

Elliott said Primeaux’s performance is a sign of things to come with the youth of the Tigers’ team.

Cooke is the lone graduating senior on the team, and Elliott said he hopes to have a more experienced team returning next season.

“When all is said and done, the guys had a decent season considering what we came to the table with,” Elliott said. “Hopefully next year they will continue to get better and we can pull better results as we go along.”