Cross Country To Run In Greater Louisville Classic Saturday

Saturday, September 30

Louisville, Ky.

8:30 am

University of Memphis

Greater Louisville Classic (M: 8k/W: 5k)

Photo by: Matthew Smith

Cross Country To Run In Greater Louisville Classic Saturday

Sep 28, 2017 | Men's Cross Country, Women's Cross Country

Tigers look to use races to build momentum for the postseason.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – It's not quite postseason time yet for the University of Memphis cross country squads. But, according to head coach Kevin Robinson, it's the mindset he wants to see from his squads at Saturday's 16^th-annual Greater Louisville Classic, one of college cross country's most-prestigious, regular-season races.

The talent and competition at Saturday's event are strong and intense, and the race site, E.P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park, also is slated to host the 2017 NCAA Championships in November.

Robinson believes Saturday's races also serve as a tone-setter as the calendar turns to October and the season's stretch run. After Saturday, the Tigers race at Alabama's Crimson Classic Oct. 13 as the final tune-up before the Oct. 28 American Athletic Conference Championships. The Oct. 13 race at Alabama is a preview of the NCAA South Region Championships, which is run on the same course in Tuscaloosa.

Greater Louisville Classic Schedule

Time (CT)	Race	Distance
9:45 a.m.	Men	8k
10:30 a.m.	Women	5k

Head coach Kevin Robinson comments
(On Saturday's Greater Louisville Classic)
"I expect to see a tremendous level of competition Saturday at Louisville. It will be, by far, the strongest competition we've seen this season to date. We've put our teams in the position where they are ready to compete. What happens next is on them. We're healthy, and going into Saturday, we have some confidence. We've got some good things going for us, but this race is no joke. Some of our runners haven't been exposed to the kind of competition we'll see Saturday. Since Louisville is hosting the NCAA Championships in November, the course will be in immaculate condition, and this race will be loaded with talent. We have to stick our nose in there, compete with everything we got and let the results speak for themselves."

(On last week's Austin Peay Festival)
"It was good for us to get back up to Austin Peay and race again. We had solid races there last year, so we went back with a similar gameplan of resting some of our women's runners so they'd be more prepared for the stretch run of the season. The women's group we did take really stepped up and performed. They executed sound race plans. Last weekend was the first time this season where we did what I thought we are capable of doing.

"(Resting our top runners) gives me a better evaluation of our younger runners. In a larger race, those younger runners get lost. In last Saturday's race, they were running and competing near the front, and that's what they are more accustomed to coming out of high school. Races like last Saturday gives me the opportunity to see which ones step up and compete with maturity. In the big races, they get overshadowed. So, last Saturday's race was a great tool for us. But, for our women's team to win the race speaks volumes of where our program is at now.

"For our men's team, we don't have the depth to rest our top runners, so they ran last Saturday. With our top runners competing, we had a gameplan to stay within ourselves and not push too hard, but to still execute. The biggest positive I saw from last Saturday that I didn't see in the first two races this season was that our guys competed. Our guys refused to get passed, especially the last 200 meters of the race. I saw competitive racing, and that means a lot as we head into what I consider the championship segment of our schedule."

(On Julian Sanchez-Pinto's return)
"Julian is a special guy. He was banged up and off his feet for 10 days. He wanted to run the previous weekend (Sept. 16 Rhodes College Invitational), but he had only been training two days prior to that race. We held him out of the Rhodes race, but there was no holding him out last Saturday. He surpassed our expectations of him going into the Austin Peay race because he hadn't been able to train. He's a competitor, and he loves to race."

Tigers Tidbits

The Tigers women's squad is running in its second-straight Greater Louisville Classic Saturday. On the other side, the men's team is competing in its first Greater Louisville Classic.
Thirty-six schools, including top-ranked Northern Arizona and No. 7 Wisconsin, are competing in the men's 8k race. The women's race has runners from 42 colleges, including No. 13 Boise State and No. 18 Wisconsin.
For the fourth-straight time this season, the women's squad runs a 5k race. The Tigers women also ran 5k races at the Brooks Twilight Classic (5^th), Rhodes College Invitational (2^nd) and Austin Peay Festival (1^st). For the second time this season, the men's squad runs an 8k race. Last week, the Tigers men ran a 6k at Austin Peay and won the team title.
Saturday's race ends a stretch in which the Tigers run three weeks in a row. Memphis started this three-straight weeks of competition with the Sept. 16 Rhodes College Invitational and followed with last Saturday's (Sept. 23) Austin Peay Festival. The last time Memphis ran more consecutive weekends was in the 2007 campaign when the Tigers competed in five-straight races without an off weekend.
The Greater Louisville Classic is the final of four races Memphis runs before the calendar turns to the month of October in 2017. The last time a Tigers men's team ran four races before Oct. 1 was in 2002. For the women's program, the last time came in 2001.
As head coach Kevin Robinson said above, Tigers men's senior Julian Sanchez-Pinto returned to the course for his first action of 2017 at last Saturday's Austin Peay Festival. He missed the first two races of 2017 with an injury. At the Austin Peay event, Sanchez-Pinto finished third overall with a four-mile, personal-best time of 18:27.6.
Megan Briley, Gabrielle Byndas, Bailey Kennemer, Mary Betsy Minkler, Paige Sandwell and Arnica Zitting all ran in last year's Greater Louisville Classic.
Kennemer ran a personal-best 5k time of 18:08.0 at last year's Greater Louisville Classic.

Up Next
The Tigers get their first break from competition next week. It is the team's first bye week since Sept. 9. Memphis returns to the course at Alabama's Crimson Classic Oct. 13.