Heavily ranked field at Wisconsin challenges Cougars

The BYU women’s cross country team heads to Wisconsin this weekend to participate in the University of Wisconsin Adidas Invitational on Saturday Oct. 19.

The invitational is one of the nation’s premier collegiate cross country races. It will take place at the Thomas Zimmer Championship Cross Country Course. The team will be divided in two 6K races, and run in either a Championship race or a B team race. The women’s Championship race will be at 12:00 PM CDT and the B race will take place at 1:20 PM CDT.

“This is going to be a huge opportunity for us to stamp our ticket for nationals,” head coach Patrick Shane said.  “The team is excited to go run again. They had such a good experience at Notre Dame and they are excited to do it again.”

At the Notre Dame invitational, Lindsey Sowards Nielson suffered a fall early on in the race and her place was not recorded for scoring. She will be racing this weekend at full capacity and that should help the Cougars overall.

Competing in the Championship race will be Andrea Nelson Harrison, Nicole Nielsen, Lindsey Sowards Nielson, standout sophomore Natalie Shields, Makenna Smith, Rachel Stewart, and Sarah Yingling.

Competing in the B race will be Kelsey Brown, Angela Ellsworth, Maren Fassmann, Carrie Jube, Jennica Redd, Erika Reddish-Nash, and Maddy Roach.

Seventeen of the top 30 nationally ranked teams will be competing this weekend at Wisconsin, along with nine other squads that received votes for the national poll. Conference rival No. 10 San Francisco will also be attending the Adidas Invitational. USF is the only other team from the WCC that is ranked, and there are only three teams ranked from the Mountain region; No. 12 Colorado, and No. 7 New Mexico. 

“The workouts have been great and we are looking forward to a fun, fast weekend,” Shane said.

There will be a live stream of the meet on Flotrack.org and more information about attending the meet can be found at UWBadgers.com