Cross Country Gets Ready for Notre Dame Invitational
Thursday, October 1, 2009 | Cross Country
The University of Florida men's and women's cross country teams head to South Bend, Ind., to compete in the 54th Annual Notre Dame Invitational held on the university's golf course.
The No. 15 women will be facing 19 other schools, including nine that are also nationally-ranked. Their toughest competition will be the top-ranked Washington Huskies, but they will also be racing against in-state rival No. 3 Florida State.
The men's team, ranked third in the South Region, will be racing 22 other schools, including eight that are nationally ranked. Leading the way is No. 11 Tulsa followed by No. 15 Providence.
The only other Southeastern Conference school that will be competing is Georgia, which is ranked eighth and sixth in the region for the women and the men, respectively.
The Lady Gators will run a similar lineup to the one that won the Mountain Dew Invitational, placing the five scorers in the top eight, including the first-place finisher junior Charlotte Browning (Pulborough, England) and second-place finisher sophomore Genevieve LaCaze (Daisy Hill, Australia). Last year, Florida finished fifth at the Notre Dame Invitational with current junior Ali Crabb (St. Petersburg, Fla.) as the second Gator to cross the finish line, finishing 28th overall and LaCaze right behind in 31st. The Gators clocked only a 26-second difference between the first and fifth finisher in 2008.
The UF men are also racing a similar lineup to the one that took first at the Mountain Dew Invitational. The top five runners placed were part of the first seven overall to cross the finish line as junior Anthony Morales (Palm Coast, Fla.) took second and senior Aaron Kindt (Orlando, Fla.) came in third. Senior Justin Taylor (St. Augustine, Fla.) will be joining the Gators after missing the first meet of the 2009 season. Last year, he placed 15th overall and second for Florida at Notre Dame's meet. His personal-best five-mile time of 24:03 also ranked sixth all-time in UF record books. The Gator men tied for sixth in the 2008 Notre Dame Invitational.
The women will line up for the 5K race at 4:15 p.m. (ET) while the men will hit the 5-mile course at 5 p.m. (ET).
As soon as the results are available, they will be posted on the cross country team's Twitter page at www.twitter.com/GatorZoneXCntry. Full results and a meet recap will be available on GatorZone.com soon after.
