Thursday, July 28, 2005

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (July 28, 2005) -  The East Tennessee State men's and women's cross country teams have announced their schedule for the 2005 season.  This will be the first year that the teams will be competing in the Atlantic Sun Conference and they will also face several teams for the first time. 

Both teams have a challenging schedule lined up for the fall.  The A-Sun conference meet is set for late October with many invitationals before that.  The cross country teams kick off their season on September 3rd at the Virginia Tech Invitational in Blacksburg, Va. 

"We're going into the new conference apprehensive of what we are going to run into with all the new schools to compete with," said head cross country coach Dave Walker.  "We should be ready for some good races, but we've got our hands full in this new league."

Last season, the men's team finished seventh and the women finished sixth in the conference.  All of the men are back to compete in 2005 with the women losing only one senior. 

"There are some injuries on the men's side including our lone senior Peter Dalton (Dublin, Ireland) so we'll have to see how he and the rest of the guys bounce back from that," Walker said.  "The women's team is rebuilding this year with a young team but we're still recruiting."

Visit ETSUBucs.com for coverage and updates for all of ETSU's varsity athletics teams.  The complete 2005 Bucs cross country schedule is listed below: