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Cross country team set to begin season

The UA men's and women's cross country teams will travel to Southern California to run in their first meet of the season this weekend as they participate in the Asics-Irvine Invitational tomorrow.

"We are going into this meet with a team ready to compete," said head coach Dave Murray, who is entering his 33rd year of coaching at UA.

The meet will be held at Central Park in Huntington Beach, Calif., with the women's 5k race beginning at 9 a.m. and the men's 8k following that morning at 9:45 a.m.

The Wildcats will be competing against teams from University of California at Irvine, Arizona State, Northern Arizona, Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, Southern Cal and several other west coast schools.

"I think the schools that will be hard to beat are the Arizona schools," Murray said. "Both NAU and ASU have really good teams this year."

Competing for the men's team will be true freshman Wade Juntunen, redshirt freshman Tom Prindiville, sophomores Steve Smith and Mike Cramer, juniors David Lopez and Rick Weis, and seniors Micheil Jones, Brent Pederson and Jeremy Lyon.

"On the men's side, our strength is going to be having five or six guys all finish close to each other at the front of the pack," Murray said in a recent press release.

Running for the women's team will be redshirt freshmen Mandee Ash and Kimberly Bates, sophomores Tara Chaplin, Jennifer Burris and Erin Doherty, junior Katrin Engelen, and seniors Kristin Parrish, Maia Wright and Claire Becker.

"The first meet is one you always anticipate a little more," Parrish said. "We haven't run a cross country meet for a year and I definitely think it's challenging, but the terrain is different so it challenges you for the upcoming courses."

Chaplin, who as a freshman competed in five NCAA Championship events and finished fourth in UA's first four cross country meets of the season as well as 12th at the Pacific 10 Conference Championships, will look to step into the No. 1 slot for the Wildcats this weekend in an attempt to become their top runner for the remainder of the season.