The men’s and women’s cross country teams will run in potentially their last meet of the season Saturday at the 2011 Division I South Central Regional Championships.
The Lady Tigers run at 10 a.m. and the Tigers run at 11 a.m. in Waco, Texas, on the Cottonwood Creek Golf course with Baylor hosting the meet. All Division I cross country programs from Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas will run in the meet.
“The team as a whole is looking to improve since this is our last meet of the season,” said junior Leigh-Ann Naccari. “Most of us are hoping to [set a new personal record].”
The top two teams automatically qualify for the NCAA Championships in Terre Haute, Ind., and 13 at-large bids are given to teams that have consistently performed at high levels throughout the season.
“We didn’t do as well in [the Southeastern Conference Championship meet] as we wanted to, so it’s a way to hopefully end the season on a much better performance,” said LSU coach Mark Elliott.
The Tigers finished 10th and the Lady Tigers finished 12th at the SEC Championship meet.
“[We want to] improve on our performance from conference,” said senior Cullen Doody.
Doody finished 19th at the SEC Championship and hopes to qualify for nationals as an individual.
“Coach [Elliott] says I have a realistic chance at making nationals,” he said. “Anything can happen on any day, but the way the system is set up, it’s really hard to make it as an individual out of our conference.”
The top five individuals who aren’t on an NCAA qualifying team receive bids to run in the championship meet.
“Being top 20 at SECs, there’s no question that he will be one of the guys competing for those individual spots,” Elliott said. “We have kids like Cullen, Richie [Chautin] and probably Charlene [Lipsey] who have an outside shot at making it as an individual, which would be very rare and great if they do.”
Doody said because there aren’t usually any at-large teams taken from the South Central Region, more runners are competing for those five individual qualifying spots.
“My freshman year, Robert Scribner from Mississippi State got 16th at SECs and qualified for nationals, but there was an at-large team taken out of his region,” Doody said.
Scribner ran in the South Regional while LSU runs in the South Central Regional.
If Doody, Chautin or Lipsey qualify, they’d be the first Tiger or Lady Tiger to earn the distinction since Joseph Simuchimba in 2007.
 
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Contact Andrew Chapple at [email protected].