{"id":430899,"date":"2026-09-09T19:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T19:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/430899\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T19:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T19:12:12","slug":"cross-country-continues-home-momentum-with-texas-am-invitational-texas-am-aggies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/430899\/","title":{"rendered":"Cross Country Continues Home Momentum with Texas A&#038;M Invitational &#8211; Texas A&#038;M Aggies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/12thman.com\/sports\/cross-country\/roster\/player\/jack-johnston\" title=\"Jack Johnston\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jack Johnston<\/a> was named SEC Men\u2019s Runner of the Week.<br \/>\nThe distance increases to 5K for the women, 8K for the men.<br \/>\nA stacked field arrives in College Station, featuring multiple regionally ranked teams.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEGE STATION\u00a0\u2013 The Aggie men\u2019s and women\u2019s cross country teams host the Texas A&amp;M Invitational Friday at 8 a.m on the Watts Cross Country Course looking to build on its strong start to the season as the race distance increases.<\/p>\n<p>The Aggies will face 15 regional programs, including more than seven teams ranked in the Top 15 of the South Central Preseason Regional rankings. The men will contest an 8K race at 8 a.m., while the women will compete over 5K at 8:35 a.m. Texas A&amp;M men\u2019s team was ranked third and women\u2019s team ranked second in the USTFCCCA South Central preseason poll, the highest of all teams competing Friday. Stephen F. Austin will look to challenge the Aggies after being picked first in the Southland Confrence Preseason Poll and sweeping the McNeese Opener last Friday.<\/p>\n<p>To continue the winning streak at home, the women bring in <a href=\"https:\/\/12thman.com\/sports\/cross-country\/roster\/player\/sophia-bendet\" title=\"Sophia Bendet\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sophia Bendet<\/a> to aid last week&#8217;s roster led by freshman <a href=\"https:\/\/12thman.com\/sports\/cross-country\/roster\/player\/laney-barnes\" title=\"Laney Barnes\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Laney Barnes<\/a>. For the men, <a href=\"https:\/\/12thman.com\/sports\/cross-country\/roster\/player\/alessandro-pasquinucci\" title=\"Alessandro Pasquinucci\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alessandro Pasquinucci<\/a> joins the six athletes who competed a week ago. The group will look defend the Texas A&amp;M Invitational team titles after sweeping the 2025 race. Individually <a href=\"https:\/\/12thman.com\/sports\/cross-country\/roster\/player\/carter-gordy\" title=\"Carter Gordy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Carter Gordy<\/a> returns as the third place finisher in a time of 23:46.3 from a year ago. For the women, <a href=\"https:\/\/12thman.com\/sports\/cross-country\/roster\/player\/sophia-bendet\" title=\"Sophia Bendet\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sophia Bendet<\/a> also finished third in a time of 17:03.7.<\/p>\n<p>This meet marks the second of four home meets for the Aggies. Following Friday\u2019s meet, the team will travel to Princeton, N.J., to compete in the Princeton Meadows Challenge before returning home for the annual Arturo Barrios Invitational on Oct. 16.<\/p>\n<p>Fans can follow the meet results through <a href=\"https:\/\/flashresults.com\/2027_Meets\/xc\/TAMUinvite\/index.htm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Flash Results Texas A&amp;M Invitational<\/a>. All home meets are free to the public.<\/p>\n<p>FOLLOW THE AGGIES<\/p>\n<p>Visit <a href=\"https:\/\/12thman.com\/sports\/cross-country\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">12thman.com<\/a> for more information on Texas A&amp;M track &amp; field and cross country. Fans can keep up to date with the Aggies on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/aggietfxc\/?hl=en\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Instagram<\/a>, and\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/aggietfxc?lang=en\" rel=\"nofollow\">Twitter\/X<\/a> by following @Aggietfxc.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Johnston was named SEC Men\u2019s Runner of the Week. The distance increases to 5K for the women,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-430899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}