Baylor cross country opens its season Friday night at Texas A&M’s Watts Course, and David Barnett is rolling into his sixth year with a roster built around experience.
The Bears will make the first of four trips down Highway 6 at the Aggie Opener in College Station, with the women set for a two-mile race at 6:45 p.m. and the men following in a 5,000-meter race at 7:15 p.m. Barnett said only two underclassmen will run, and both are on the women’s side.
“With experience, you get a lot more consistency,” Barnett said. “It's not as big of a gap between your best race and your second-best race.
I'm definitely excited to see the upperclassmen step in and put it out there, and I think the underclassmen will definitely follow their lead. So, I'm excited.”
The women head into the opener with a group that could be Baylor’s strongest since 2017, when the Bears finished third at regional and sent two individuals to nationals. Leading that push is Ruth Kimeli, a track second-team All-American who has qualified for the NCAA Cross Country Championship in each of her first two seasons, though she is sitting out this week.
Even without Kimeli in the lineup, Baylor’s top end looks sharp with former Texas transfer Mackenize Browne and Eastern Kentucky transfer Khadijah Ennasri. Barnett called that trio the best top three the Bears have had on paper in terms of track times.
“On paper, it is definitely the best top three as far as track times are concerned,” Barnett said. “Anytime you have national qualifiers coming back, that's a big deal. This is definitely one of the best groups of people we've had here at Baylor.”
Browne’s path back to this point has been a long one. She opened last season with a top-10 finish at the Gerald Richey Invitational at UTA, but she did not finish the next meet and later had heart surgery that ended her cross country season and wiped out most of her track season as well.
Ennasri arrives after winning individual titles last season at the EKU and Asbury Invitational, and the Bears will also lean on juniors Ella Perry, Rickeisha Simms and Lucy Benton. The only underclassmen in the women’s lineup this weekend are sophomore Evanna Jacobsen and freshman Jenna Jacobsen.
On the men’s side, junior Jack Sterrett enters as the anchor. The Midway High School product was Baylor’s No. 1 runner in each of the first four meets last season and the only Bear to compete at the NCAA South Central Regional. He’ll be joined by fellow juniors Caden Biltz and Straton Miller, along with seniors Ben Archer and Nolan Keenan.
“Jack is probably our top guy, but we have a couple other guys that are in a similar situation,” Barnett said. “We had a couple guys that were all-region a few years ago, and I think we have a couple seniors that can do the same type of thing this year.
If you can get a couple guys that are all-region, all of a sudden, you have a really good opportunity to have a good team. I'm excited to see what Jack and some of the older guys can do.”
The six-team meet also includes host Texas A&M, Houston, Houston Christian, Texas Southern and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
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The good news for Baylor is that this is not a group starting from scratch. Five returning players will make up the core of the lineup, with senior Yurang Li again set to anchor the top of the order after a strong year. Charleston will give the Bears a clean first look at that proven nucleus, along with the kind of competition that can quickly show whether experience translates into another step forward. [Read more 🡒]