Cross Country, here we go!

This weekend the UT women's cross country team will be traveling to Indiana to compete in the NCAA Division 1 Pre-national meet. The nation's top teams will be competing in two separate races on Saturday. The longhorns are in the second of the two races, and will have an opportunity to learn the course prior to the national meet in November, which they will be looking to qualify for.

Most people don't know what cross country even is, so I will try to give a good synopsis about the sport. Cross Country is ultimately one race in which up to hundreds of competitors run at one time. The sport is defined by its rugged terrain. The races are often run on golf courses but can take place in parks, rec fields, and anywhere with a combination of grass, woods, prairie and trail.

As far as scoring goes, it is quite like gold in that a team hopes to keep their score as low as possible. Each person is scored by the place in which they finish. So, if your team runs in places 2, 9, 14, 15, and 22 then your team has scored the summation of these places, that is, 62 points in this example.

This weekend will be the first of several larger and more competitive races for the women longhorns. In two weeks they will compete again in Missouri at the Big 12 Conference meet and two weeks after that they will head to Waco for the NCAA South Central Region meet. If all goes well they will then return to Indiana for the national meet.

Check back here for updates regarding this weekend's meet and those to come!