Cross Country to Open Season Friday
Thursday, September 8, 2005 | Cross Country
The University of Florida Cross Country teams will open the 2005 season Friday with the Mountain Dew Cross Country Invitational at the UF Golf Course. Nineteen collegiate women's teams and 18 collegiate men's teams are expected to participate.
The first race of the day is the men's open/collegiate 8K at 8 a.m. The women's collegiate/open 5K begins at 8:30 a.m. Following the collegiate races will be four high school 5k races. High school boys will run at 9 a.m., followed by high school girls at 9:30 a.m., junior varsity boys at 10 a.m. and junior varsity girls at 10:30 a.m.
The collegiate teams expected to compete are Bethune-Cookman, Florida, Florida Atlantic, Florida A&M, Florida International, Florida Southern, Florida State (women only), Johnson and Wales (men only), Miami, North Florida, Pasco-Hernando Community College (women only), St. Leo, USF (women only), St. Thomas, Stetson, Tampa, Trinity Baptist (men only), Troy, UCF and Warner-Southern.
This will be the 17th running of the Mountain Dew Invitational, although this is the first season for the race with Mountain Dew as a sponsor. The race has changed names from the Barnett Bank Invitational, NationsBank Invitational and the Gator Invitational.
In 1988, the Gator men's cross country team was coming off of its second straight Southeastern Conference Championship; but during those two championship years, UF had never performed before the home crowd in Gainesville. Florida head coach John Webb changed that with the first running of the Barnett Bank Invitational that October.
Despite a second-place finish that first year for the men, they have gone on to take first place 11 out of the next 14 years while to women have kept the top team award at home 13 times in the 16-year history. Georgia won last year's race, run at the Canterbury Showplace in Newberry, Fla., due to a rain soaked UF Golf Course. The last time a Florida team won was in 2003, as both teams took home the title.
Since the races beginnings, the list of champions in both competitions has read like a list of the top “who's who” in Florida cross country. Among the former Gators who have won this race are Gator All-American, SEC Champion and Olympian Keith Brantly - who won the first-ever individual medalist honors in 1988 - as well as 1991 All-American Mike Mykytok and All-SEC runners Chris Wilson, Randy Hollinger and Chris Duncan. The last Gator champion on the men's side was current sophomore Steven Hassen, who won in 2003 as a freshman. On the women's side, the first-ever champion in 1988 was another UF All-American and Olympian, Shelly Steely. Other champions include All-American and All-SEC honoree Coralena Velsen (1990-92), All-SEC Marny Westphal (1993) and three-time All-SEC, two-time SEC Champion and 1995 All-American Becki Wells (1995-97) who graduated in 1998. The last Gator women's champion was Jennifer McGranahan in 1998.
