The No. 1-ranked Arizona women’s cross country team and the men’s team will seek the 2013 Pac-12 Championship on Saturday in Louisville, Colo., at the Coal Creek Golf Course.
The men’s 8,000-meter race begins at 10:40 a.m. MDT; the women will begin their 6K race shortly after, at 11:40 a.m.
The Arizona women’s team has a high chance of taking home first place this year, after coming up short in 2012 with second place.
Joining the Wildcats at the Pac-12 Championship meet are: ASU (M/W), California (M/W), Colorado (M/W), Oregon (M/W), Oregon State (W), Stanford (M/W), UCLA (M/W), USC (W), Utah (W), Washington (M/W) and Washington State (M/W).
“It’s a team effort, top to bottom,” said assistant coach Mo Huber. “It’s [about] being a teammate, supporting one another, making the environment on the team healthy and setting up for success. I think everyone’s pretty level-headed, and know that it’s not a given. We still have to win our race and there needs to be the whole team being part of that.”
The last meet for the Wildcats was the fifth annual Wisconsin Adidas Invitational in Madison, Wisc., on Oct. 19. With this weekend’s win, the Wildcat women have won all four of their races this season, thus becoming No. 1 in the country.
“[We’re] doing everything that we can to be the best runners we can. So it feels like this is the payout for all the hard work we did,” freshman Maria Larsson said about the team’s rise in the rankings.
The women’s team earned a first-place finish in the race. Sophomore Kayla Beattie led the pack and took seventh place overall with a time of 19:56. Larsson was next for the women with a time of 20:07, good for 15th place overall. Third for the UA was junior Nicci Corbin with a time of 20:09, taking 18th place overall.
This was the first year that the women took a first-place win in Wisconsin; in both 2011 and 2012, the team took third place overall.
For the men’s team, junior Lawi Lalang, who also made his season debut that weekend, led the way for the Wildcats with a time of 23:35, coming in 13th place overall in the 8,000 meter race. Coming in second for the men was junior Sam Macaluso, with a time of 24:18, good for 92nd place.
— Follow Makenzie Thiel @makenziethiel
