The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga cross country teams will head this week to the NCAA South Region Championships hosted by the University of Alabama at the Harry Pritchett Running Park in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
"We will be running against the top programs in the NCAA South Region," Chattanooga head coach Andy Meyer said. "We are excited to be running in this meet. This one and the SoCon meet are our biggest of the season so the kids are primed and ready."
The Mocs competed at the Crimson Classic last month.
Emily Poole placed 24th for the Mocs, leading the women to a 21st place finish. The men, paced by John Payne finished 18th in the standings ahead of Vanderbilt, Southeast Louisiana and Southern Conference foe Mercer.
The men's course will cover a 10-kilometer distance while the women will run 6,000 meters.
"We ran the course about four weeks ago to get our pacing and race strategy tuned for Friday," Meyer said. "We have had several weeks of very good workouts and we have several kids who keep getting faster and improving even this late in the year."
Both team placed fourth at the SoCon Championships two weeks ago with Poole earning all-conference second team honors.
Running for the men will be Payne, Richard Guiry, Ryan Gebelein, Jake Etheridge, Mark Britt and Nathan Watson. The women will have Poole, Nicole Buehrle, Brianna Nelson, Haley Morris, Hannah Caldwell, Julia Henderson and Kennedy Thomson.
"This is a very fair and tough course and we hope to represent UTC very well."
Results and recaps will be available at GoMocs.com following the race.