Utah State’s men’s and women’s cross-country teams return home to host the Steve T. Reeder Memorial, on Friday, Oct. 7. USU will welcome Boise State, BYU, Weber State and Westminster to its second home meet of the season.
USU veteran head coach Gregg Gensel values the opportunity to run at home, while focusing on the improvement of the program.
“We are looking to give our student-athletes more opportunities to race and improve, so having a developmental meet like this is a way to do that in the middle of the season,” Gensel said.
Events will be held at the Steve and Dona Reeder Cross Country Course. The women’s race begins at 3 p.m., while the men’s race gets underway at 3:45 p.m.
The course is designed to give runners a realistic picture of what the region championship course will look like. In Friday’s meet, the men will run an 8.8-kilometer race, while the women will compete on a 5.2-kilometer course. Both courses will be the same as the championship course except for a section of the east loop that will be left off. The men’s championship course will have the men run the excluded section three times, while the women’s championship course will run it twice, increasing the course lengths to 10k and 6k, respectively.
In its last meet, Utah State’s men finished eighth out of 38 teams with 211 points, while the women placed 10th out of 45 teams with 275 points at the Lehigh-hosted Paul Short Run.
Doug Hoffman is the associate athletic director for Utah State University Athletic Media Relations.