Hosting 45 colleges and 57 high school squads from around the country, Stanford cross country is set to compete this weekend at the 34th Stanford Invitational.

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Stanford will host a swarm of collegiate and high school runners this weekend, as the 34th Stanford Invitational gets underway. The Cardinal men and women are ranked first and sixth, respectively. #gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/7879
Stanford Daily File Photo

Stanford will host a swarm of collegiate and high school runners this weekend, as the 34th Stanford Invitational gets underway. The Cardinal men and women are ranked first and sixth, respectively.

The event is one of the biggest of the weekend on the West Coast, attracting mostly schools from California. And although it isn’t the first event of the year for Stanford, it serves as a kick-off of sorts for the rest of the year, as redshirt sophomore Anne St. Geme explained.

“This is the start of the season,” St. Geme said. “This is the first race for a lot of collegiate teams that are coming.”

Almost as notable as the collegiate races will be the high school events that take place this Saturday. The Stanford Invitational is the biggest tournament of the weekend to many California high schools, where a number of the state’s top high school runners will be racing their best at the collegiate setting of the Stanford Golf Course.

Cardinal women’s cross country comes into the Invite with high hopes; the team is currently ranked No. 1 in the nation and is coming off of back-to-back national titles.

The men’s squad also expects a great deal of itself this season; the team starts the year No. 6 after their fourth place finish in the national championship last year.

Although the Invitational will not be the most intense of events for the team this year, it helps ease the Cardinal into the daunting regular season that awaits.

“It’s a great way to start off the year in terms of team camaraderie because we get all the track athletes out there [to help as volunteers], so they get an idea of what the distance runners are doing,” St. Geme explained. “The distance runners really appreciate the track runners going out there and helping out with logistics.”

After the Stanford Invitational, the Cardinal squad will be off for two weeks until the Bronco Invitational on Oct. 13. The event will be hosted by Santa Clara.