The cross country team will travel to Oklahoma this weekend to compete in the Cowboy Jamboree meet. The meet will begin with women at 8 a.m. and then men at 8:35 a.m.
The Cowboy Jamboree will be hosted by Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The ACU cross country team took last weekend off from competition and used the to train for this meet.
“We had a rather hard week of training last week,” said Taylor Ochs, junior chemistry major from Midland. “Everyone is looking to run a personal best since this meet is a very good opportunity to do it, and the conditions are forecasted to be favorable.”
The women’s team placed third overall at the Texas Tech Open earlier this month. Sophomores Alexandria Hackett (21:24.18) and Diana Garcia-Munoz (21:31.47) were the best finishers for ACU, coming in 11th and 13th respectively. Hackett’s time was over a minute faster than what she recorded at last year’s meet when she placed 52nd overall.
The Wildcats have high expectations for this invitational as it will be a good test to show how the team stacks up against other Div. I schools.
“This is the oldest cross country race in the United States, and the competition there is usually tougher than any other meet we will go to including the conference champions,” Ochs said. “Our goal is to beat as many teams as we can in the university section of this race.”
Over the past weekend, assistant coach Drew Graham suffered a serious spinal cord injury while visiting Colorado. Earlier this week, he made significant improvement in rehabilitation by regaining movement of his shoulder. The team has used Graham as inspiration and determination to perform to their best of abilities.
“A key theme for our team that has created motivation is to run for Coach Graham who is currently in the hospital,” said Kimberly Lamadrid, sophomore biology major from West Covina, California. “We want to show him that the countless hours that he has put into our training has paid off.”
