For the last race of the regular season, the men’s and women’s cross country team will travel to Missouri S&T in Rolla for the Jackling Jocks Invitational, a meet that the men’s team dominated last year.

Not only did the men’s team earn first place overall, they had four of the top 10 runners in the race. Those runners included juniors Adrian Todd and Eric Schott who crossed the finish line just .12 of a second apart, earning second and third place. Junior Andrew Webster finished the race at fourth place, with senior Jake Benton just seven seconds behind junior Webster. Colton Wooldridge followed closely, crossing the line at 25:33.73 taking 10th place.

This year may be a little different for the Lions as their top two runners, Schott and Benton, will not be competing at the Jackling Jocks Invitational so they can get some rest.

“Even without number one and number two out this week, we should be able to still win if we all come together,” said sophomore Ryan Jackson.

Jackson and sophomore Nathan Henry also ran at the meet in Rolla last year, so the Lions will still have experienced runners on the course. The rookies on the course for the Lions will be sophomore Jacob Coffman and freshmen Tyler Rush and Drake Smelser.

At last weekend’s Chili Pepper Festival, the men’s team finished third overall in the college division behind Augustana and West Texas A&M. Schott finished 14th overall with a time of 25:00.9 followed by Benton at 25th place and Wooldridge finishing 86th.

Women’s Cross-Country

The women’s team finished eighth overall in the college division at the Chili Pepper Festival last weekend in Arkansas.

Junior Dora Eastin was the first to cross the finish line at 57th place, followed by sopohmore Addie Mengasser at 81st place.

The team has been focusing on finishing its workouts and staying together as a pack throughout practices this week.

As for this weekend, almost every runner for Southern’s women’s team will be new to Rolla’s course. Of the eight members competeting, Mengswasser is the only runner who ran the course last year. She finished 25th as the Lions took third place.

Mengswasser remembers the team running great race times last year, as the Lions took third place and almost all women crossed the finish line in less than 20 minutes.

As for this weekend’s meet, “This race is key for determining how we will do against Pitt and SBU for conference,” said Mengswasser. “We need to stick together and pack up in order to do great things now for this meet, as well as in conference. This race is a stepping stone towards conference.”