K-State Heads to Fayetteville for Chile Pepper Festival

The K-State men's and women's cross country teams head to Fayetteville, Ark. on Friday (September 30) for the Chile Pepper Festival hosted by Arkansas at Agri Park.

The Chile Pepper Cross Country Festival was created in 1992 and is now one of the largest cross country festivals in the country hosting approximately 6,500 runners.

The women will compete in the college women's 5k at 4:30 p.m., CT with the men following in the McDonnell Memorial college men's 8k at 5 p.m., CT. Almost the entire Wildcat roster will race at Agri Park, the first time back since 2014 when the women finished third with 116 points while the men placed 16^th with 473 points.

More than 40 schools will participate in Friday's college races, including the nationally-ranked Razorback squads as well as the men's and women's teams from Arkansas State, Belmont, Houston, Oklahoma, Stephen F. Austin and Tulsa. Both ASU and Tulsa have men's and women's teams ranked in the top-10 in the with the Golden Hurricane men at No. 2 and the women at No. 7 in the Midwest Region poll.

Both K-State teams are going into the meet with momentum after earning first-place finishes at the Greeno/Dirksen Invitational on Sept. 17 in Lincoln, Neb. It was the first time since the Missouri State Invitational on Sept. 19, 2009, that both the men and women's team took first place in the same meet.

In the USTFCCCA Regional rankings released on Monday, the K-State women dropped in the Midwest Region poll to No. 8, while the men jumped up to No. 12.

Junior Sydney Burton posted the fastest 5k time by a Wildcat at Mahoney Park with her fifth place finish of 17:27.4 overshadowing the previous best by Jaybe Shufelberger in 2019 at 18:26.4.

Senior Stephen Kielhofner ran a new 8k personal best in a seventh place time of 24:29.0, taking the fastest men's spot in an 8k at Mahoney Park which was previously held by Cooper Schroeder at 25:00.6 in 2019.

All the women who ran at the Greeno/Dirksen Invitational recorded new 5k personal bests with freshman Cecilia Fisher (18:13.6) and sophomore Helen Giefer (19:03.6) shaving a whole minute off their previous bests in an 18^th and 61^st place finish, respectively.

Four other men ran 8k personal bests at Greeno/Dirksen Invitational, including sophomores Tommy Hazen (16^th; 24:47.2) and Jack Vincent (34^th; 25:15.1) and juniors David Lutgen (17^th; 24:47.5) and Jack Moore (33^rd; 25:13.0).

This will be the first meet of the season for sophomores Alexa Rios and Kyle Johnston and junior Kerby Depenbusch.

FROM HEAD COACH RANDY COLE
On preparing for this meet…
"Training up and recovering. We got to keep our volume steady, really work on the second half of each practice, that'll carry over. A key thing is to be steady, they just got to be able to run a second half, that's stuff we got to work on in practice."

How to follow the 'Cats: For complete information on the K-State Track and Field and Cross Country Teams, visit www.kstatesports.com and follow the team's social media channels on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Kansas State University Athletics

K-State Heads to Fayetteville for Chile Pepper Festival

Players Mentioned

Sydney Burton

Kerby Depenbusch

Cecilia Fisher

Helen Giefer

Tommy Hazen

Kyle Johnston

Stephen Kielhofner

David Lutgen

Jack Moore

Alexa Rios

Cooper Schroeder

Jaybe Shufelberger

Jack Vincent

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