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The Murray State News

The Murray State News

The Murray State News

Cross country preparing for home opener

The Racers hope to have a repeat of last seasons home opener, where both teams placed first overall. (Photo courtesy of Racer Athletics)
The Racers hope to have a repeat of last season’s home opener, where both teams placed first overall. (Photo courtesy of Racer Athletics)

Rachel Essner

Contributing Writer

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The Murray State cross country team will return home to compete in the Murray State Open on Friday, Feb. 5, at 2 p.m. at Miller Memorial Golf Course. This will be the second meet of the season, following the Belmont Open as well as the Racers’ home opener. 

In the last meet on Jan. 24 at Belmont, the women’s team finished in sixth and the men finished seventh with five Racers recording a personal record. 

Head Coach Adam Kiesler wants to leave the opening day jitters behind and see his team dominate in the home opener. 

“Our expectation this meet is that they learn from a couple weeks ago, make good decisions if they didn’t last time in terms of race strategy and go out and compete like we always ask them to do,” Kiesler said. 

The Racers had their first ever home meet last season, and took first place overall in both men’s and women’s. Junior Dani Wright placed seventh (20:17.7) and senior Caleb Kawasaki placed fifth (26:45.1) in last year’s meet. 

“I have high expectations for those players for this meet, as well as Emma Creviston, who I think is going to race herself back into where she wants to be in terms of time,” Kiesler said.  

The Racers have to adjust how they are competing since the COVID-19 pandemic postponed their season from the fall to the winter. 

“This season is a little different since we are competing in the cold versus in the fall like we usually would,” Kiesler said. “There [are] little things we can improve on each race like time management, warmup and getting used to being in the cold. Now that it is at home, there’s no travel time, so hopefully that can play a part in running better than we did a couple weeks ago.”

The women will kick off the meet with the 5K at 2 p.m., followed by the men at 2:45 p.m. with the 8K for the second half of the event.

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