Oct. 12, 2007

SPARTANBURG, S.C. - USC Upstate cross country gets back onto the course this Saturday morning as it travels to Furman University for the Furman Invitational. Men's race is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. and the women are set to go off at 9 a.m. at the Furman University Golf Course.

This is final meet Upstate will compete in before the Atlantic Sun Championships on Oct. 27 in Nashville, Tenn. and the Spartans will try to use this meet as preparation for it.

"We're just going to go out there and compete," Upstate cross country head coach Jimmy Stephens said. "It's a tough course and this will be an evaluation of ourselves heading into our conference meet.

Since it is two weeks before most conference championships, many teams will be running in the Furman Invitational including Wofford, Davidson, VMI, Winthrop, Presbyterian College, and host school Furman. Other schools include Miami (Fla.), Charlotte, Tennessee Tech, and North Carolina (men).

Also competing will be Atlantic Sun Conference teams North Florida and East Tennessee State. It will be the first time this season that Upstate has run against teams from its own conference.

"Our ultimate goal is the conference (meet) and that's where we want to run our best," Stephens said. "Furman is a gauge for that and this will let us see if we have to adjust anything in our training for the two weeks leading up to the conference meet."

Freshman women's cross country runner Emily Tangwar is coming off a history-making run two weeks ago when she took the women's title at The Citadel Invitational with a time of 18:14.38. It was Tangwar's first career win and the first individual title since the program was restarted this season.

"(Emily's) training is going great," Stephens said. "This course is a lot tougher than the one at The Citadel and this will give her a chance to see where she is against some very good runners."

The Upstate women will look to follow Tangwar's example to a good run.

"For the past few weeks I've been working our 2-6 runners very hard on the women's team to help close the time on Emily, they've been doing an outstanding job to get this team to be successful for our last two meets, and I expect big improvements from all of them," Schlichter said. "It's been a tough time but they've handled it really well."

On the men's side, Upstate has been steadily improving over its last several meets thanks to the leadership of freshman Matt Henderson and improvement by junior Brent Durden.

Freshman Conrad Goeringer has also been a key runner for the Spartans as well as they look to keep it going this weekend.

"We've been battling some nagging injuries on our mid-pack guys the past few weeks, but up front we are stronger than ever with Matt Henderson and Brent Durden looking mean and fit," Schlichter said.