No. 25 Arkansas heads into Saturday’s 38th annual Chile Pepper Festival with a chance to learn a little more about its depth, and the Razorbacks will do it on their home course at Agri Park in Fayetteville.
The women’s Harter Habanero 5,000m race is scheduled for 11 a.m. The meet features 68 teams, and Arkansas will be part of a field that also includes SEC foe Mississippi State and Texas, plus South Central Region teams North Texas and UT Arlington.
Last week gave the Razorbacks a strong first look at where they stand. Isca Chelangat made an immediate impact in her Arkansas debut, winning the Gans Creek Classic in meet-record fashion and earning SEC Runner of the Week honors. She’ll be back in action Saturday alongside two teammates making their season debuts: Paityn Noe and Emmaculate Chepngetich.
“We’re going to open up Emma and Paityn this weekend, they both look really good,” noted Arkansas women’s cross country coach Marc Burns. “Emma is a freshman and this will be her first collegiate race. Paityn is an experienced veteran that’s coming back and she will open some eyes that she’s going to be back at a high level.
“We’re excited to see where Emma and Paityn open up this weekend and go from there. We’ll find out if we have a couple more low sticks. Over the course of this season we’ll see if Paityn is getting back to the level she was in placing seventh at the 2024 NCAA Championships.”
Arkansas’ younger runners also get another shot to settle in after their collegiate debuts at Gans Creek. The Razorbacks’ freshmen, who filled places 2-3-5 among the team last week in the 6,000m race, will drop down to 5,000m on Saturday. Braelyn Combe finished in 20:18.5 to place 27th, Gabbie Bishop was right behind her in 20:18.6 for 28th, and Marissa Ferebee ran 20:59.0 to take 70th.
Jayden Hill, a junior with a career-best 2:00.03 in the 800m, also made her first cross country start and clocked 20:37.3. That put her fourth among Arkansas runners and 43rd overall.
Burns said the freshmen’s trajectory is what he’s watching most closely.
“Among the freshmen on our team we think Emma will be in our top three the way she’s looked in practice,” stated Burns. “Braelyn and Gabbie, I think, are going to just get better each week, so we anticipate them being certainly in our top five to seven.
“The goal will be to be strong enough that we could have a different top five every meet. That’s when you know you have a really good team, when you have seven or eight runners that can all be intermixed and you still win championships. That’s the goal, to have that depth.”
This week’s rankings reflect how crowded the SEC picture already is. Alabama is the conference’s highest-ranked team at No. 10, followed by South Carolina at No.
12, Florida at No. 13, Missouri at No. 22 and Arkansas at No.
- Kentucky, Tennessee and Vanderbilt are also receiving votes in the top 30 poll.
Fans can follow the meet through a live stream on runnerspace.com, while live results will be posted at flashresults.com. Schedule, parking and course map information is available on the Chile Pepper Festival website.
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