Oct. 31, 2014 Big 12 Championship Central | Live Results
WACO, Texas - The Baylor men's and women's cross country teams will compete in the 19th-annual Big 12 Cross Country Championships on Saturday at Rim Rock Farm in Lawrence, Kan.
"This is a great time of the year," head coach Todd Harbour said. "We're excited and our athletes are ready to roll. We've had a good season up to this point, so we're pretty healthy and looking forward to the challenge. Rimrock is a great course, and it's always a fun place to run. The Big 12 is always a great cross country meet."
The conference meet kicks off at 10 a.m. CT with the women's 6,000-meter race. The men's 8,000-meter run will follow at 11 a.m. CT.
The top men's and women's teams are crowned league champions, while the top 15 individuals in each race earn All-Big 12 honors. The top newcomer in each race will earn Newcomer of the Year accolades.
The Baylor women are currently ranked No. 28 in the USTFCCCA's national top 30 poll and No. 2 in the South Central regional rankings. The Baylor men are 10th in the USTFCCCA's South Central regional rankings
For the women, senior Rachel Johnson has been the top finisher for Baylor in both of her races. She took top individual honors at the Pre-National Invitational with a career-best 6,000-meter time of 20:21.1 in her last meet out. She also started off the year with a second-place showing at the Roy Griak Invitational.
Senior Mariah Kelly, sophomores Alex Davis and Maggie Montoya and freshman Ann-Marie Dunlap have also been in the top-five runners for BU in all the races that have competed in this fall. The rest of Baylor's allotment of 10 runners includes Courtney Cox, Erika Overbeck, Bree Schrader, Peyton Thomas and Madie Zimmerman. With their top runners in action, the women have finished fifth at the Roy Griak meet and seventh at the Pre-National Invitational.
"We're excited, because we still haven't put our best race together yet, so we feel like we still have our best races in front of us, which is what you hopefully feel this time, that you're not running on fumes," Harbour said.
The Baylor men will have eight athletes in action led by freshman Eric Anderson, who has been the top runner for the Bears in four of five races for the Bears.
Seniors Derwin Graham and Jonathan Tijerina, along with juniors Matt Galvin, Chris McElroy and Kyle Scanlan and sophomore Jordan West, have also contributed for the Bears this year. Freshman Matthew Parham will get his first experience in a conference meet to round out the Baylor contingent. The Bears finished third at the Bear Twilight Invitational, second at the UTA Season Opener, 10th at the Chile Pepper Festival and 38th at the Pre-National Invitational.
"I'm really excited about how we're looking coming in," assistant coach Jon Capron said of the men's team. "There are some teams in our conference that we've sort of put in the rearview, and we hope that we can keep them there and kind of set our sights on the people ahead of us and see if we can run them down."
Baylor will look to improve on last season's seventh-place men's and fifth-place woman's showing. That men's placing tied 2012 as the highest finish since 2004, while the women tallied their highest finished since 2008.
Individually, Johnson placed 10th to earn the program's 20th All-Big 12 finish last year and was 13th in 2012. She will try to become the program's third three-time All-Big 12 performer, joining Brittany Brockman (2003-05) and Erin Bedell (2005, 2008-09).
Three other returning Lady Bears also finished in BU's top five at the conference meet a season ago, including Montoya, who was 20th, Davis and Kelly, who were 22nd and 36th, respectively.
For the men, Graham was BU's second scoring runner a year ago, while Tijerina was the next Bear to cross the finish line.
Saturday's meet will feature a total of eight teams ranked in the top 30. The men's race, led off by No. 4 Oklahoma State, will also have No. 26 Oklahoma, No. 29 Texas and No. 30 Iowa State. Following No. 6 Iowa State and No. 9 West Virginia in the women's race are No. 21 Oklahoma State and then the Lady Bears.
This marks the second time Kansas has hosted the event, after hosting in 2006 as well. The last time the meet was in the Sunflower State, the Baylor women were fifth, while the men were eighth.
Following the Big 12 meet, the Bears will travel to the NCAA South Central Regional Championships, with their top seven runners in action Nov. 14 in Fayetteville, Ark.
To stay current on all things Baylor cross country, follow the team on Twitter: @BaylorTrack.
