NACOGDOCHES, Texas - The 2010 collegiate cross country season begins Friday for Northwestern State, Centenary and host Stephen F. Austin with the annual SFA Lumberjack Opener pairs competition at the Pecan Acres Park.
Teams will enter tandems who will split the distance in both races. The women will run 4,000 meters each beginning at 5:30, while the men will cover 6,000 meters apiece starting at 6:15.
Veteran NSU men's coach Leon Johnson expects to pair Mark Dotson with Kyle Lessig, Dusty Dischler with Cameron Mehl, Jason Enright with Chris Lanier and newcomers Travis Plumb and Ricky Trent.
Tandems running for new Lady Demons coach Heather McDaniel will be headed by her top two runners, Karensa Ellis and Lawana Perkins. The other pairings are Ali Fontenot and Sarah Emory, newcomer Rebecca Mahan and Courtney Herschberger, and newcomer Shana Lee and Kirstie Jones.
"We're just looking for some good times to give us a starting point, and hopefully some improvement," said McDaniel. "We're training through these races and use them as workouts to be peaking for conference in 10 weeks."
Ellis was NSU's top runner in every meet last fall as a freshman.
Johnson said after two weeks of training on campus, he's hoping the men will perform well against outside competition.
"We're looking for consistency out of the runners, and for them to do what they are capable of doing at this point. It's the start of the season and we have a lot of progress to make," he said.
So far, there are a couple of obvious standouts for the Demons.
"Dusty Dischler came back well prepared, the best shape of his career," said Johnson. "He and Mark Dotson had very good training summers."
