Lagat, MT Ready for SBC Cross Country Championship

There's only one thing that's better than being the first individual conference champion in Middle Tennessee history - becoming the first repeat champ in the school's annuls. That's what soft-spoken sophomore Geoffrey Lagat hopes to do on Saturday as he defends his Sun Belt crown at the league's championship in Bowling Green, Ky. "I want to defend the title," said Lagat. "I want to win this race and that's what I'm going to try to do. There's a couple of runners that are pretty good, so it should be a competitive race." Lagat, who hails from Kapsabet, Kenya, has put together an impressive year so far. He has one victory under his belt at the Belmont Invitational and two second place finishes at the Western Kentucky Invitational and the Austin Peay Invitational. Lagat led the charge with a second place finish at the APSU invitational, and the Blue Raiders turned in their best performance of the year. The team finished fourth overall and produced some of the best individual performances of the year despite running a course that held over a foot of water in some locations. However, an earlier race may help give Lagat and his teammates a little advantage over most of the field on Saturday because they ran at a meet on the same course earlier in the year. Both Middle Tennessee teams ran at the Western Kentucky Invitational on Sept. 15. In fact, Lagat may have run his best race of the season on that course, finishing the race as the top collegiate runner in the field. "I think it should be an advantage for us since we have run there before. I ran a pretty good race there the last time and I hope that it will carry over for me." Despite continuing to improve all season, the Blue Raiders were predicted to finish seventh in the upcoming SBC championship. "It's hard to predict how these types of races will turn out because we don't compete against each other. We've only seen Western Kentucky and Arkansas State all year," said head coach Dean Hayes. "Its really not an even comparison, either, because the courses vary so much from meet to meet." Lagat said, "My assumption is that we should finish higher than seventh place. It is a disappointment to be picked that low, but who cares? It doesn't mean anything, anyway." Hayes said that he was pleased with his team's progress through the season and that he felt like they would be ready to run on Saturday. "We've gotten better at every meet. I think we've done a good job of putting everything together this week. Geoffrey is really running well and he helps make our other runners better. Our distance running is certainly stronger this year in total." The Lady Raiders are set to compete in Saturday's event with no one really knowing what to expect. This year's event has been increased to a 6,000-meter race rather than the 5,000 meters that the women ran a year ago. The Lady Raiders have shown some improvement over last year's squad and are hopeful that it will continue on Saturday. Hayes, however, isn't sure about the conference championship because of the new distance involved. "We've only run one 6K event this year, but it was at Western Kentucky on the same course that we'll run on Saturday. It's hard to predict how this will work out for everyone, but I will say that I think it will be an advantage for us to have already run this course at this distance." The Sun Belt Championships will get underway at 10 am on Saturday with the women's event. The men's event will follow beginning at 11 am. Awards will be given out at a ceremony set to begin around 11:45 am. The Cross Country Championship is the first event to count towards the All-Sports Trophy standings for the 2001-02 season.

Middle Tennessee State University Athletics

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