LAKE CHARLES—It's a new year with plenty of new faces, as the Northwestern State men's and women's cross country teams begin their seasons.

The teams start out their seasons at the McNeese Season Opener on Friday at the Enos Derbonne Multi-Sport Complex.

The women begin their race at 5:30 p.m. while the men start at 6 p.m.

"Naturally, this meet will be a good rust buster," new head coach Payten Vidourek said. "This meet is to see how everybody's summer training went and putting it together now that we're early in the season. In this meet, I am not looking for anything crazy.

"We're planning on training through this meet and we haven't altered any of our training plans so far. This isn't the biggest meet in the world, but it is one that will be good to be at as we move toward conference."

NSU has gone to Lake Charles every single year a cross country season has been held since 2013.

It is the first of two meets NSU goes to this season that takes place on the campus of McNeese, also running there Sept. 28.

On the women's side, there are three returners—Leah Thompson, Samantha Todaro and Lalaina Wood—as well as four newcomers.

However, on the men's side, just two of the seven runners return: Korbin Shumate and John Klein, both of whom ran with Vidourek, who graduated from NSU recently.

As senior leaders of the teams, Vidourek has been impressed with the leadership of Shumate and Thompson.

"Korbin has been great leadership-wise," Vidourek said. "He has done tremendous leading the five freshmen guys so far with pacing duties and just showing them around the town where we run.

"Leah has practice every morning at 8 a.m., so she has forced us to go to practice morning at 6 a.m., so it is mandatory to make sure we do it all as a team, which is great. She is helping us stay
organized because we need to stay on a good time schedule and that is really great for whenever races come around. Both seniors are doing great leadership-wise."

Shumate is coming off a 61^st place finish at the Southland Conference Championships, running a 29:34.5. His best showing came at the McNeese State Cowboy Stampede, clocking a personal best 22:03.3 in the 4-meter run to finish 31^st.

Like his fellow senior Shumate, Klein also had his best day in Lake Charles in 2023. He ran a personal best 21:27.4 in the 4-meter run to finish 21^st at the McNeese State Cowboy Stampede.

He placed 56^th in the SLC Championships in the rain, running a 28:54.5 after finishing 55^th as a sophomore in 2022.

Thompson, the only upper classman among the female cross country runners, also ran a personal best in Lake Charles in 2023. She ran a 20:10.5 in the 5k run to place 26^th.

In 2022 at Lake Charles, she also posted a personal best in the 3k, running a 11:40.7.

All three aim to record more personal bests as they travel to Lake Charles for the first of two times during their final years.

Following the meet in Lake Charles, the teams take a week off before going back into competition, traveling to the Lone Star State, as they compete in the Rice Invitational in Houston.