Cross Country Prepares for Pre-Nationals Meet Hosted by Virginia

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – Arizona Cross Country travels to Charlottesville this weekend for the UVA XC 23 Invitational hosted by the University of Virginia on Saturday. This highly competitive meet serves as a Pre-Nationals competition, as Virginia will host the NCAA Cross Country Championships at the same course in November.
 
“The Pre-Nationals competition is a competition we heavily targeted when we were planning out this season,” said Head Coach Bernard Lagat. “It will be the most competitive meet we have had thus far. It will give the team a taste of the big race, where we hope to be strong competitors very soon. Last year was a little too soon for the men since they were almost all freshmen, but this year they’ll be able to experience what it’s like at Nationals and know what they need to do to take the next step at the national level.”
 
The competition will be held at Panorama Farms and allows teams the opportunity to preview the course prior to the NCAA Championships. Due to the high volume of competing teams, both the men’s and women’s races are broken up into two sections: the Blue Race (Championship) and the Orange Race (B). The Arizona Men will be competing in the Blue Race 8k at 6:40 a.m. MST, and the Arizona Women will be running in the 6k Orange Race at 8:00 a.m. MST. Results from the entire morning of competition can be found here.
 
Arizona’s most recent competition was their home meet, the Dave Murray Invitational, which took place at the Randolph Golf Course in Tucson at the end of September. At the meet, the Arizona Men placed second with a season-low score of 42, and the Arizona Women took fourth. On the men’s side, all five scoring runners finished in the top 15 of the 8k. They were led by Iker Sanchez Lopez, who finished first for the team for the second straight competition. He placed fifth overall and was followed by his brother, Ian Sanchez Lopez, who placed sixth and Cooper Quigley, who placed 10th. For the women, Sailor Hutton finished first for the team in the 6k, which she has done at all three of their meets so far this year. She ended in 14th place overall and was followed by freshman Sorcha Shiu who placed 18th. The Arizona Women also got scoring contributions from two Arizona triathletes: Kelly Wetteland and Dana Prikrylova.
 
Lagat added, “The Arizona men’s team will…