The Alabama men’s and women’s cross country team will participate in the Greater Louisville Cross Country Classic this Saturday at Tom Sawyer Park in Louisville, Kentucky.
This meet will be the biggest the Crimson Tide has competed in this season, with more than 40 schools in attendance. The competition includes familiar conference foes such as Vanderbilt, Ole Miss and Kentucky, but it also includes out-of-conference opponents like Michigan and Louisville.
The women won the Commodore Classic on Sept. 17, and the men finished second. Junior Katlyn Will finished fourth individually and is improving every day, head coach Dan Waters said.
“She is increasing her workload and getting used to the new coaching style, and she is capable of being one of the best runners in the SEC,” Waters said.
The top performer on the men’s side was senior Carison Kemei, who finished second.
“Kemei was one of the better athletes last season and has developed into a leader this year,” Waters said. “This will be a good test with a larger pack of people for him to compete against.”
While individual performances are a major part of the meets, Coach Waters said the team’s performance requires everyone to be competitive.
“Individual performances are important, but the real challenge of cross country running is getting the entire team to perform their best at the same time,” Waters said.
Waters said the first several meets can be considered almost pre-season meets, because they are all about building the strength of the team for the later competitions, and this competition marks the part of the season that begins counting towards the strength of schedule for the conference and national championships.
“The Greater Louisville Classic is the right size and level of competition to build some momentum for later events,” Waters said.
Senior Austin Duckworth, who finished thirtieth overall in the Commodore Classic, emphasized the importance of this meet.
“This weekend is a big race, and the crucial goal is to build momentum,” Duckworth said. “We are more rested going into this weekend’s race, so hopefully we will have a big performance.”
