UW harriers to host first meet

by UW Athletics Media Relations

The University of Wyoming cross country team is set to begin the 2009-10 season with the start shot of the Wyoming Invitational Friday at 6 p.m. for the women and 6:30 p.m. for the men at the Jacoby Golf Course.

Joining the Cowboys and Cowgirls this year will be teams from Colorado State, Northern Colorado and Utah Valley.

The Cowboys and Cowgirls finished last season’s host meet with two second-place finishes. The top returner for the Cowboys is sophomore Ryan Griesbach with his 21st-place finish while on the women’s side is junior Alysha Davis with her seventh-place finish.

“This will be a great ‘rust-buster’ for us and will really be a nice gauge for how training has gone for our team,” said sixth year head coach Randy Cole. “We have a very young team and I am very interested to see how well we can work together in this race and look forward to getting a lot of information on how to teach these kids on how to race in this conference.”

The young Cowboy squad is led by one junior, Taylor Kelting and two returning sophomores, Griesbach and Greg Miller. For the rest of the team it will be their first meet in a Cowboy uniform.

On the other side, the Cowgirls return six harriers from a year ago and are led by two juniors, Davis and Emily Byra. The Cowgirls will send eight new bodies to the fairways in their first meet wearing the ‘Brown and Gold.’

“It will be a nice learning experience for both teams to learn how to get properly prepared for a meet throughout the week,” said Cole. “I look forward to seeing some of the new kids run and get their first one out of the way.”

The men will be running a 6.8k race while the women will be running a 4k, results can be found at www.wyomingathletics.com.