PROVO, Utah – BYU women’s cross country will compete in the Washington Invitational Friday afternoon at Jefferson Park in Seattle.
In addition to No. 15 Washington, the field will also include No. 4 Stanford and No. 5 Oregon. BYU, currently ranked No. 23 nationally, has its sights set on beating Washington. It will be the most difficult contest of the season, but BYU head coach Patrick Shane says it's doable.
“It’s a high powered meet,” Shane said. “It will probably be the meet this weekend with the most talent in women’s cross country. Our goal is to beat Washington.”
Unlike most sports, where each team prepares for and competes against one opponent as a time, cross country teams face any number of teams at once, in this case 12. Coach Shane said that getting up there with teams like Stanford and Oregon would be terrific, but it’s a lot more manageable for the Cougars to wrap their minds around beating out one team than three or more.
“We’re not opposed to beating Stanford or Oregon,” Shane said. “But they’re really, really good. We can’t do anything about how good they are; we can only manage how good we are. So we’re going to try to bite off a chunk we might be able to get our mouth around, and that’s the Washington Huskies.”
Shane also looks forward to having the best race – team-wise – that the Cougars have had all year. The Washington Invitational marks the first meet of the season in which BYU faces other ranked teams, and in which all its top scorers will compete at full-strength.
The 6,000 meter race will start Friday, October 2, at 3:15 p.m. PDT.
Live scoring will be available on the BYU women’s cross country schedule page.