Saluki Cross Country Heads to Bradley Classic

Friday, October 14

Peoria, IL

3:15 p.m.

Southern Illinois University

Bradley Classic

10/13/2016 | 10:58:00 | Cross Country

By: By Danny Valle, SIUSalukis.com

The Saluki cross country team will head to Bradley University tomorrow afternoon to run in the Bradley Classic in their final tune-up before the conference meet.

SIU will race in the Red portion of the Red & White meet, the former featuring only division-one schools. Multiple Missouri Valley Conference opponents will partake in the event, including Missouri State, Northern Iowa, Loyola University, Illinois State, and host team Bradley.

"We want to come out with confidence going into the championship," said Saluki cross country head coach Kevin Cataldo. "If we can learn some things and take it away and get right down to it, compete against conference schools, and compete against every team in that race. That's our main goal, learning how to compete."

Sophomore runner Josh Maier has paced the men's team in each race this season, claiming two wins and a sixth-place finish in the first three meets. Junior Natalia Hajduk has lead the women's team with a pair of top-10 finishes to go along with a season-best time of 18:17.8 in her effort at Notre Dame.

"They want to compete and they want to race," said Cataldo. "We just have to keep the momentum rolling, focus on ourselves and what we can do to make ourselves better and not worry about what everybody else is doing."

The women's team kicks things off with the 6000m race at 3:30p. m. while the men's team follows with the 8000m race at 4:15p. m.