The Illinois State University Cross Country Trail will debut Saturday as the Redbirds serve as hosts for the Illinois State Cross Country Invitational.
By far, the biggest thing about this meet is the opportunity for our teams to compete at home, said head cross country coach Jeff Pigg, whose mens and womens teams both finished fourth out of 13 teams in their season opener at Friday. For our teams, I think that the Bradley meet was a great start for us. Our main goals are to make progress each week so that by seasons end we are running at our best.
The meet will begin with the university mens 8K race at 8:45 a.m. followed by the university womens 5K race at 9:30 a.m. The meet will also feature a high school boys 5K race at 10:15 a.m. and a high school girls 4K race at 11 a.m. At 11:30 a.m., there will be a 5K race that will be open to the general public.
For the university races, participating schools include Danville Community College, SIU-Edwardsville, Kendall, College of Lake County, Greenville, Bradley, Illinois Wesleyan, Illinois, Rend Lake, South Surburban College, Northwestern (women only), St. Xavier, SIU-Carbondale, Wisonsin (women only), Northern Iowa and Loyola-Chicago.
Northern Iowa is probably the best team in our conference, said Pigg. Wisconsin, Illinois, and Northwestern are Big Ten programs that always have excellent runners.
The high school races will feature University, Eureka, Highland, Clinton, Limestone Community, Hoopeston Area, El Paso, Benton, East Peoria and Field Crest.
The new course runs around the perimeter of the University Farm and replaces the previous course located on the University Golf Course. It also will be the site of the Valley Cross Country Championships on October 27.
This course gives our program a chance to host meets, said Pigg. I think it has a chance to be one of the premier courses in the country. I appreciate the efforts of Doug Dowdy (assistant athletic director of facilities), the people of University Farm and the facility employees at Illinois State in making this course a reality.
