Sept. 19, 2007

Texas A&M International University's cross country teams will compete in familiar surroundings this Saturday at the Texas A&M University Cross Country Invitational. TAMIU is sending its men's and women's runners to the A&M meet for the fifth straight year.

The meet will be held at Penberthy Intramural Fields in College Station. TAMIU is one of only a couple NCAA Division II schools scheduled to compete in an event highlighted by NCAA Division I squads like the Houston, TCU and Rice.

TAMIU competed in its first full meet of the season last week at the Rice Invitational. Both teams finished in sixth place in the team standings.

Jenny Méndez was TAMIU's top finisher in the women's race. She finished at 17:26 in the 3.6 K race. Rebecca Sánchez finished 31st at 18:22 and Galdys Peña placed 32nd at 18:37.

Gedyon Kiflezgi, Luis Beltrán and Eddie González finished 22nd, 23rd and 24th in the 5.4 K men's race. Kiflezgi clocked in at 19:26, followed by Beltrán at 19:35 and González at 19:40.

Head coach Benny Rodríguez says both teams have some work to do but he is confident about both achieving success this season.

"Some of our guys did not do their homework during the summer but we are slowly putting it together and we should be fine by conference," Rodríguez said.

"The women have been running together and their times have been steadily improving. I look for the women's team to have a strong showing later on."