MOREHEAD, Ky. — The Morehead State cross country teams will look to better last year's results when coach Clay Dixon's clubs head to Cookeville, Tenn., for the Ohio Valley Conference Championship meet.
The women's 6K race will begin the competition at 11 a.m. ET, with the men's 8K following at noon ET on the courses at the Putnam County Sports Complex. All 10 league schools will field entries.
Tennessee Tech is the host school. The event is returning to Cookeville after last being run there in 2010. The 2022 women's race will feature a 6K for the first time in conference history. The change mirrors the distances used at both the regional and national championships.
Last year, MSU's men finished seventh, while the women were sixth.
The team has been prepping for the race since the two squads posted impressive finishes against quality competition by placing sixth and 10th, respectively, at Bowling Green's Falcon Invitational on October 14.
"They are excited and (have been) looking good at practice the last few weeks," Dixon said.
Morehead State will enter 10 runners in each event. Sophomores Justin Bland, Toby Cook, Peyton Fairchild, Kyler Stewart, Ethan Vance, Jacob Vogelpohl and Garrett Watts; juniors Kyle Embry and Jarrett Forrest; and sixth-year team member
Josh Grogan will represent the Eagle men.
Sophomores Megan Bush, Cloe Copas, Isabella Copher, Jennifer Ramirez, Lucy Singleton and Laikin Tarlton; freshmen Christiana Brittian, Kaylyn Holman and Abby Taylor; and junior Riliegh Owens will toe the line for the Eagle women.
"Anything can happen at the OVCs. We could have a great day and place second or third on the men's side or we could have a bad day and be sixth or seventh. It's so tight (between the) fourth through seventh-place teams that anything can happen," Dixon said. "It's the same for the women. On a great day, (we could get) fourth or fifth place, but if things go wrong, we could be in that big pack of teams that comes down to just a few points and we could be sixth or seventh."
Dixon is bringing an experienced club to the competition. Six members of both teams were among the nine to compete at the 2021 meet in Nashville.
Embry paced the men's squad by crossing the line in 25th clocking a time of 26:10.30. Forrest followed in 34th in 26:34.20, with Fairchild in 41st in 26:47.90, Bland in 50th in 27:16.40, Cook in 57th in 27:39.90 and Stewart in 65th in 28:14.00.
Singleton and Copher finished back-to-back leading the women in the 2021 league meet. Singleton was 18th in 19:06.40, with Copher in 19th in 19:07.40. Tarlton was next in 25th in 19:20.80, with Copas 46th in 19:53.70, Bush in 49th in 20:02.10 and Owens in 57th in 20:21.20
Embry and Singleton have led the Eagles in three of the teams' four meets this season. Watts and Tarlton were the top finishers in one race apiece.
Morehead State has won both the men's and women's titles twice in its history. The men were crowned in 1988 and 1995, while the women took home the trophy in 1979 and 2000. Jeff Faith (1996), Susie Anderson (2000) and Hall of Famer Karen Lutes (2001) are the program's only individual champs.
Eastern Illinois is the two-time defending men's winner, while Belmont won last year's title to snap a string of nine consecutive victories by eastern Kentucky's women. Both Belmont and eKU are no longer members of the conference.
This year's competition is wide open. It will be the first time according to available information that none of the squads are currently regionally ranked by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.
Additional information about the meet can be found at the conference's championship homepage (
https://ovcsports.com/tournaments/?id=11), while live results will be available at the link
https://bit.ly/3SvCbOV.
After Saturday, Morehead State will travel to the NCAA Southeast Regional, which will take place on Friday, Nov. 11 at Louisville's E.P. "Tom" Sawyer Park. The first race will be at noon.
