Cross Country Set for Competition at SEC Championships

COLUMBIA– The South Carolina women’s cross country team travels to Columbia, Missouri, for the SEC Championships on Friday. The women’s 6K championship race is set to kick off at Noon.

Hope Dominique is set to return for the Gamecocks after recovering from injury. It would be her first race of the season. Dominique finished as a top-10 freshman at last year’s SEC meet. Carolina finished 11th at the 2020 SEC Championships. Dominique and Kira Jenkins finished fourth and fifth for Carolina.

Hannah Twine has led the Gamecocks all year and is set to run at her second SEC Championship meet. Jenkins was the top Gamecock at their last meet on Oct. 15. She has been consistently in the Gamecocks’ top three. Lily Weeks and Claudia Satzke have been towards the top of the Carolina scoring efforts throughout the season.

Follow the Meet
Fans can follow along with updates on Twitter @GamecockTrack. A full recap will be posted on Twitter, Facebook and GamecocksOnline.com.

The conference championship races will air live on SEC Network. The broadcast is set to begin at 11 a.m. and the women’s 6K is slated for Noon. Bill Spaulding (play-by-play) and Larry Rawson (analyst) will bring fans the action from Missouri.

Live results can be found at here.

Last Time Out
The Gamecocks ran at the Pirate Invitational on Oct. 15 and finished fourth as a team.

Kira Jenkins led the way for the Gamecocks, finishing in 14th, and Claudia Satzke was right behind Jenkins in 17th place. Hannah Twine, Carolina’s leader this season, did not finish the race. Neither did Meg Lebo, who was in Carolina’s top-seven at the Paul Short Run. Katerina Hendrix (32nd), Isabella Pisani (36th) and Kathleen Abrams (39th) rounded out the Gamecocks’ top five.

Gamecocks in Columbia, Missouri
Kathleen Abrams, Savannah Bowers, Hannah Cella, Hope Dominique, Katerina Hendrix, Kira Jenkins, Meg Lebo, Jenna Pellizzari, Isabella Pisani, Claudia Satzke, Hannah Twine, Lily Weeks.

Coach Allden on the Meet
On the his thoughts and feelings heading into the SEC Championships meet
“We’re always striving to have a top-10 finish as a team. What I’m looking forward to is having a full lineup, which we haven’t had over the last two meets. We’ve missed Hannah Twine and Meg Lebo at various points over the past couple of weeks. We’ve also missed Savannah Bowers and Lily Weeks at times this season. We also have the return to action for Hope Dominique who was a top-10 freshman at last year’s SEC meet. She was our No. 4 at the SEC Championships last year. It’s the first time we’ve had the healthiest lineup. The conditions look challenging. The chance of rain is really high on Thursday and high on Friday. I would venture to say it will most likely be cold and wet. The course is a great course, but conditions will be challenging.”

On how to prepare his team for the wet and cold weather conditions
“As a coach, I always operate under the ‘everyone has to operate under the same conditions’ mentality. This is not a condition that favors anybody. It’s a matter of dealing with it, accepting it and then running the best you can. I am not going to dwell on it, but I am going to stress that these conditions are such that no one is going to feel smooth and comfortable, and if you expect that, you’re mistaken. Everyone will feel awkward on squishy ground. Just like us, the bulk of these teams have training environments similar to ours. In some ways it is even, but how we deal with it could determine how we place.”