LAKE CHARLES -- After strong outings at Louisiana Tech, the Northwestern State cross country teams return to the site of this fall's Southland Conference Championships on Saturday to compete in the MSU Cowboy Stampede.
 
The Lady Demons were team champions at the Louisiana Tech Mook Duals, while the Demons' Brandon Lewis-Graham was the men's individual champion in NSU's last competition, earning him Southland Conference Athlete of the Week.
 
"We were happy with how things went last week and want to keep building on that. Brandon is a lot more confident coming into this course a second time," said head coach Chris Sauer. "We had some guys that came into last week under the weather so I'm expecting a better mid-pack this time around."
 
For the second time in a month, NSU will run at the Enos Derbonne Sports Complex located five miles off the McNeese campus, where the men will match up against Alcorn State, Bossier Parish Community College, Central Arkansas, Grambling, Houston Baptist, McNeese, Nicholls, Prairie View, Sam Houston State, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, UL-Lafayette, and Xavier-Louisiana while the women face all of the above with the exception of UCA and adding Louisiana Tech, Pearl River Community College, and Texas Southern to the field.
 
The field of nearly 600 runners will begin action at 8:30 a.m. with the women's collegiate 5,000-meter run, followed by a men's collegiate four-mile run at 9 a.m., and ending with varsity and junior varsity high school races.  The awards will be issued at 12 p.m.
 
Isabella Hudson has been the Lady Demons' top finisher in both meets this fall, while Lewis-Graham has paced the Demons in the McNeese Season Opener and at the Louisiana Tech Mook Duals.
 
"The girls ran an exceptionally good race as a team. I want to make sure we're following a similar plan going into this race," said Sauer. "Right now, their strongest asset is how close those top five girls are to one another. If they can work off one another and continue what they've done so far, I think they will have a great meet."
 
Sauer is pleased to see several conference teams in action to get a look at the course that will be used for the Southland meet.
 
"We're expecting to see a good amount of Southland teams there so this will be a good opportunity for us to see what we need to work on before October 26 at the conference championships," he said.
 
After Saturday's races, NSU is back in competition again at the Mississippi College Invitational in Clinton Mississippi on October 13.