Depth pushes Lopes to Tucson

Following one of the best starts to a season in program history and a week off from racing, the Grand Canyon cross country team will travel south to Tucson, Ariz., to race in the annual Dave Murray Invitational at the Randolph Golf Course.

"We have been training really hard," GCU head coach Sara Slattery said. "We have been putting a lot of work in because our end goal is conference and regionals. So we are not backing off our training a ton."

Building on the depth and youth of the program, the Lopes will continue to push as they face Arizona for the second time in as many competitions, as well as Arizona State and others, creating an "Arizona State Championships-like" meet, as Slattery called it.

"We are using this meet to help us for the upcoming meets and it is nice to be able to do it in Arizona with some tough Arizona competition and it will give us another indication of where we are at right now," Slattery said.

At the George Kyte Classic, senior Lindy Jacobson and freshman Blake Bennett led the GCU women's and men's teams, respectively. Jacobson finished second overall and crossed the finish line just two seconds behind the race winner from Northern Arizona. Bennett took sixth place with senior Daniel Flores tight on his heels by one second.

"It's tough to predict performances at this stage because we are so deep because anyone can step up and interchange quite a bit," Slattery said. "We have four girls that were right there behind Lindy at NAU and Blake, Daniel and even Angel (Salazar) are right there at the front with guys right on their heels too.

"Practice is practice but racing is the fun part so it's putting it together in the race."

The women's race will begin at 5:15 p.m. with the men's race following at 5:45 p.m.

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Players Mentioned

Blake Bennett

Daniel Flores

Lindy Jacobson

Grand Canyon University Athletics