The Illinois State mens and womens cross country teams will be back in action Friday night, as they will be participating in the 18th annual Bradley Open at Detweiller Park in Peoria.
The field will consist of 22 teams, including 14 Division I programs, and nearly 450 student-athletes competing for their respective schools.
This meet will be extremely competitive with the amount of teams that will be participating, said Illinois State cross country coach Chris Bailey. There are some top quality programs that will be there so it will give us a chance to see how we stack up against some of the best.
The womens team is coming off a first place finish in last weekends Redbird Invite. The Birds claimed four of the top five spots, including first place finisher Lauren Ritt. This weekend, Baileys squad will be helped by the return of Jen Klostermann and Betsy McDonald. The two runners sat out last weekends meet with minor injuries.
On the mens side, Jeremy Doherty and Walter Ogola will try to repeat their top five performances of a week ago. Doherty finished third in the Redbird Invite while Ogola was fifth.
Last weekend some of our guys did not race their best race, and I expect those mistakes to be minimized this weekend, Bailey said. I fully expect our guys to step up and run in the front of the pack.
The men begin the Bradley Open at 5:30 p.m. with an 8K race, followed by the womens 5K at 6:15 p.m.
