University of Evansville cross country coach Don Walters has announced a change to his weekend schedule, as the Purple Aces will not be competing in Saturday’s Queen City Invitational outside of Cincinnati, as originally scheduled. Instead, Walters’ Purple Aces will head south to Tennessee to take part in the 2008 Sewanee Invitational on Saturday morning.

 

The schedule change was decided upon after it was discovered that the Queen City Invitational would be just a 5,000-meter race for both the men and the women. Instead, UE will now compete in a Sewanee Invitational with the customary 8-K and 5-K distances for men and women. The meet will begin at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.

 

“To get to where we want to be at the end of the year, I really need both teams competing at their standard distances this week,” said Walters. “We had already competed in one short meet last week with the Mid-America Opener. With the way our training is set up, we can not afford another short meet.

 

“The competition in the Sewanee Invitational will be a good challenge for us. We’ll get to run against some teams that we do not usually compete against, and we’ll also get to go up against another very good team in Mississippi State.”

 

The UE men are coming off of a second-place finish in the eight-team Mid-America Opener last week, as junior Greg Pulscher picked up right where he left off last fall by pacing the Purple Aces with an 11th place finish. The UE women, meanwhile, are coming off of a fifth-place finish in the Mid-America Opener, with junior Courtney Heller leading the way. Both UE teams displayed a good pack mentality last week, as UE placed its top five runners all within 35 seconds of one another.

"I was really pleased with how we were able to run in a fairly tight pack last week," said Walters.  "Hopefully, we can continue to grow that pack mentality throughout the year."