Sept. 12, 2008

LOS ANGELES - The USC women's cross country team will compete at the 64th Annual Aztec Invitational at Balboa Park in San Diego, Calif. on Saturday (Sept. 13) at 9 a.m. Among the 18 teams joining USC and host San Diego State are three-time defending champion Arkansas, Air Force, UNLV, CS Fullerton, UCSB, LMU, Long Beach State and CS Los Angeles.

"This will be the first meet of the season that our top four runners will competing and I'm excited to see how we compare to the other good teams that will be there," said USC cross country coach Tom Walsh.

Sophomore Sarah Cocco will attempting to become the first Trojan ever to win the same cross country meet in consecutive years as she won the 2007 Aztec Invitational with a time of 17:43. Also running this week for USC are sophomore Zsofia Erdelyi, junior Bridget Helgerson, redshirt junior Christine Greer, junior Chanel Fischetti, freshman Leah Gaeta, freshman Jessica Lundin and sophomore Brianna Bentley. For Cocco, Erdelyi, Helgerson and Greer, it will be their first race of the season as they did not compete at the season opener at UC Irvine last weekend.

The Trojans hadn't had an individual win a cross country race since 2003 when Cocco won the 2007 Aztec Invitational, but it was as if she opened the floodgates as USC would go on to have the top finisher in its next three races, first Cocco at Pepperdine, than Erdelyi at the Triton Invitational and then Laura Meyers at the CS Fullerton Invitational.

The USC cross country team will not be in action again until Oct. 4 at the Pepperdine Invitational in Malibu, Calif. Last year Cocco won the Pepperdine Invitational with a USC 6K course record of 20:00.