The Florida A&M University women’s cross-country team will compete in the Florida State University Invitational today, hosted by FSU.
The team will run a 5K course around Apalachee Regional Park this evening. They will be challenged by FSU, who is ranked number one in the nation, and other teams including the University of Tampa, the University of West Florida and Florida Tech. Last year, the women’s cross-country team placed fifth out of 17 teams.
“I’m not thinking about the other teams,” said Zenia George, a junior occupational therapy student from St. Lucia. “We train just as hard, and we just go out there and compete.”
The team will not compete in FAMU’s fourth annual Bobby Lang Invitational Saturday because they want to focus on the meet at FSU.
The team is returning from a strong finish at the Bethune-Cookman Beach Invitational in Daytona. The women swept the first six places to gain FAMU’s third consecutive win at the invitational.
“The meet was a just a training tool,” George said. “It was really a race among our teammates.”
Chandelic Jackson, a junior criminal justice student from Detroit and team captain, said the last meet was an indicator of where they are.
“We need to be more confident and push ourselves more than we usually do,” Jackson said.
There was no meet last week, so the athletes were able to have more intense workouts and increase their mileage. Not only have they prepared physically, but the team has also been training mentally to just run it.
The team hopes for better times in this meet and want to maintain a good standing in the conference. This meet will show how much the runners have improved.
The FSU Invitational starts at 6:20 on Friday evening.