Texas A&M cross country will begin its 2019 season on Friday as the team hosts the Aggie Opener at the Dale Watts Cross Country Course in College Station.
The women’s team will start with the 4,100-meter race at 6:45 p.m.
Seniors Ashley Driscoll and Kelsie Warren and junior Ashton Hutcherson will lead the women. In addition, 2018 SEC Championship participants Rachel Bernardo, Julia Black, Carrie Fish and Abbey Santoro will also be present for the Aggies.
A&M assistant head coach Wendel McRaven said he is looking forward to seeing how the women’s team will perform this season.
“On the women’s side, I think we have a great group returning that finished fourth in the NCAA South Central region last year,” McRaven told 12thMan.com. “People started stepping up in that meet, and we started looking like the team we envisioned at the beginning of the season last year. I think we have good quality depth through eight to 10 runners.”
Following the women, the men’s team will start with the 6,000-meter race at 7:45 p.m.
Seniors Jon Bishop and Brandt Preston along with junior Zephyr Seagraves will head the men’s performance this season. Sophomores Gavin Hoffpauir and Wesley McPhail will also return, having also competed in the 2018 SEC Championships.
“For the men, some of the excitement is with the newcomers we have in transfers adding to the mix with guys we have right now. It will take some of them a while to get into the flow of things,” McRaven told 12thMan.com. “There is no one guy necessarily who stands out as a superstar, but there’s a lot of guys pretty close together equal in ability. That makes for exciting potential.”
Towards the beginning of this year, the SEC preseason poll had the men’s team ranked seventh with the women’s team tied with Kentucky for eighth.
The biggest competitors on the men’s side for the new season include Arkansas, Texas, Rice, North Texas, UTRGV, Incarnate Word, UT-Arlington, Lamar and McNeese State.
For the women, the top contenders include Arkansas, Texas, Rice, Texas State, Baylor, SMU, UTRGV, Houston and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.