BUPA GREAT EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL CROSS COUNTRY CHALLENGE PAGE
TEAM USA MINNESOTA PRESS RELEASE
MINNEAPOLIS -- Augsburg College men's and women's track and field/cross country head coach Dennis Barker has been named as the men's team leader for the United States team that will compete at an elite cross country meet in Scotland on Saturday (1/5).
Barker will serve as one of the coaches for a group of the top distance runners in the United States at the
Bupa Great Edinburgh International Cross Country Challenge, which will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland on Saturday. Barker will coach a group of nine seniors (ages 20-older) and six juniors (ages 19-younger) in two races. The senior race will be 8,000 meters in length, while the junior race will be 6,000 meters.
In addition to Barker, Augsburg will also be represented with two runners on the women's senior team -- cross country assistant coach
Meghan Peyton and track and field assistant coach Jamie Cheever. The women's senior team will run a 6,000-meter race on Saturday.
The race, in its third year in 2013, will feature three teams -- the United States, United Kingdom (Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and a European Athletics Federation team -- competing at Edinburgh's Holyrood Park. The winning team will be determined by aggregate scores from the four races (men's senior, women's senior, men's junior and women's junior). The event will be televised on BBC One in the United Kingdom.
Peyton and Cheever qualified for the Scotland event by virtue of their top-10 finishes at the
USA Track and Field Club Cross Country Championships, held on Dec. 8 in Lexington, Ky. Payton finished fourth and Cheever placed seventh as
part of a Team USA Minnesota squad, coached by Barker, that won the women's open division title at the meet. Three of Barker's other Team USA Minnesota members will also run in the Scotland event, with Jon Peterson running on the senior men's team and Ladia Albertson-Junkans and McKenzie Melander joining Peyton and Cheever on the women's team.
In addition to his coaching duties at Augsburg, Barker has also served as coach of
Team USA Minnesota, a training center for elite distance runners, since it was founded in 2001.
