Nate Allen

FAYETTEVILLE - By vote of the SEC’s head cross country coaches, the Lance Harter coached defending SEC champion  Arkansas Razorbacks women and Chris Bucknam coach Razorbacks men are favored to win their SEC Cross Country Championships that will be run Oct. 30 in Baton Rouge, La.

Both Razorbacks teams open their season Saturday in the SEC Preview run on the same LSU course that will host the SEC Championships.

With no coach allowed to vote for their team, the SEC head women’s team coaches voted 13-1, with Harter voting for Ole Miss, that reigning NCAA champion  Arkansas would win its eighth consecutive SEC Cross Country championship.

Of the league’s 12 head cross country coaches,  Mississippi State and South Carolina don’t field men’s cross country teams, nine voted Bucknam’s Razorbacks the favorite and three voted for Ole Miss, the SEC Cross Country champion in 2017 and 2018 with Arkansas the runner-up.

For Harter’s and Bucknam’s distance runners, denied a 2020 Outdoor track season by coronavirus concerns which also cancelled the NCAA Indoor Championships, Saturday’s race will be their first competition since helping Arkansas’ men and women win the SEC Indoor Track and Field Championship last Feb. 28-29 in College Station, Texas.