BATON ROUGE - The LSU men's and women's cross country teams begin their 2011 season Saturday with the Bulldog Invitational at the Mississippi State Horse Farm course.
The men will run 8,000 meters at 8 a.m. and the women will go 5,000 meters at 8:45 a.m. CDT.
LSU will run alongside SEC rival Mississippi State, as well as Jackson State, West Alabama and Blue Mountain College.
"We're starting a week later than a lot of other schools so we were able to prepare a little bit more for this meet," said LSU head coach Mark Elliott. "It's a course I like because it's an honest course that gives us a chance to see where our athletes are in terms of what we need to work on."
LSU returns four men and five women who competed in the Bulldog Invitational last season.
The Tigers will look to Richard Chautin to replicate his start to the season a year ago as he won the 2010 Bulldog Invitational individual title, finishing in 24 minutes, 41.13 seconds to begin a run of three-straight top-five finishes.
Senior Cullen Doody, an All-Louisiana selection in 2010, also had a strong performance for the Tigers in this meet a year ago placing in the top 10 with a career best 8k time of 26:26.18.
Junior, Roger Cooke was another Tiger who ran a personal record at this distance in Starkville last year, clocking a time of 24:47.49.
For the Lady Tigers, juniors Brea and Dakota Goodman return to this meet after they both ran personal bests of 18:47.90 and 18:45.96, respectively, at 5k in 2010.
The Bulldog Invitational will be the first college meet for a number of freshmen.
Andria Aguilar, Samantha Levin and Michelle Mobley make their debuts for the Lady Tigers while Phillip Dempsey, Quincy Downing, Keith Griffith, Brian Mutell, Phillip Primeaux, Bradley Robeson andWilliam Wiesler all run for the first time for the LSU men's team.
"It will be interesting to see how our freshmen do covering this distance because it's longer than what they're used to in high school where women usually run 3k and men go 5k," Elliot said.
The Tigers will return to Baton Rouge for the LSU Invitational, their only home meet of the season, Saturday, Sept. 24. The meet will take place at Highland Road Park. The women cover 6k beginning at 8:05 a.m. followed by the men who will run 8k at 9:15 a.m.