2012 Patriot League XC

[quote]Nate Lynch wrote:

I come here for serious discussion

You clearly are in need of a new message board.

uuummmmm......ever hear of Elise Deroo???

Definitely. I even hear her favorite book is "Old Man in the Boat" by Dernbest Hemingdungus.

Aight, turds, let's cut the riff-raff and get back to business. I gotta inklin' that Patriots is gonna be a classic distance grind.

Here are some predictions for y'all to chew on:

1. Navy - I wonder if Rhianna went to Navy (GET IT? LIKE THE MOVIE BATTLESHIP LOL). But fo' real, buncha tight abbed, sweet smelling, chiseled faced hunks... wait wha-

2. American - I wish Centrowitz Sr. was my dad.

3. Lehigh - They have poop colors (no judgement if you're into that kinda stuff #poopstuff)

4. Army - I don't want to get beat up so I won't say anything.

5. Bucknell - Like seriously, does anyone like them? #shitdonnersays

6. Colgate - Johnson is gonna have one. Buncha dinguses besides that

7. Holy Cross - The Lord is good, The Lord is Awesome, God is the Lord, I love the Lord.

8. Lafayette - Drunk and high at the same time, drinking champagne on the airplane.

The hood is where I'm from, but it is not who I am.

I like Bucknell this year. Donner is a great coach and may just have the young talent to pull this off.

Fighting Tookers wrote:

You're alumni are laughing at you.

Maybe. But I'd bet his alumni know how to spell "your."

Lehigh is looking very tight butthole

What is the secret to Navy's success?

I ran at Navy from 1983 to 1987 (and I really sucked), so things may have changed there, but I doubt it has changed too much. We had Ronnie Harris, Louis Poore, John Lezniak, and Guy Jackson and Jeff Holyfield - all state champs in high school. So the raw materials were pretty good.

Al is still the coach. He had a staple of workouts in x-c that never varied from year to year. There is an article in a recent Runner's World that perhaps explains this, as Rick Salazar, Alberto's brother, ran for Navy (and had one of the top 25 times on the course all time as of 1983, but later was displaced). The article says Al used to talk with Bowerman about workouts. So perhaps Navy had an Oregon connection of sorts.

However, I suspect there was not too much duplication. I've always been interested in what kind of workouts other programs do / did and I never saw much duplication from Navy to Oregon.

I feel I should not share some of the key workouts or what mileage we ran, as that is Al's "work product" and he, not me, should be the one to decide whether to talk about the workouts.

In my opinion, the big reason was and is Navy's history and tradition. When I was there, the football team really sucked and we did well, so we felt great. We expected to run at NCAA finals and we did all four years. We did not thing the other teams were beyond reach. This seems to be continuing, although I do not think Navy has made it to NCAA's in quite a few years.

Also, we ran as a group in the mornings and on weekends. I bet it is the same way still. We ate all our lunches and dinners together, too, at the same table ("team tables"). All the meals were also cooked for us and pretty darn good.

If one wins a letter and scores against Army, one gets to wear a letter sweater every Friday to class to take pride in this.

Running was also a big way to "get away" from being a midshipman, so I think we all looked forward to it (perhaps more than at other schools - but I cannot really say).

We were all on scholarship, so to speak, so we didn't have to stress over financial issues. Al used to criticize this smugness.

We did drink, that's for sure - and probably too much.

Al used to point out that there is no special workout that turns a mediocre runner into a good runner, etc. He said many of the best runners succeed in spite of the stupidity of their coaches. This humbleness about his own methods made me, at least, respect his and realize that races were the thing that mattered - the only measuring stick. I trust his runners have the same approach.

Judging from a post above stating that Navy now has nine guys with sub-9:20 PR's from high school, it appears Al is still doing a good job recruiting.

Greg Hill, Navy has always had a great program.

However, they did not go to NCAA's in 1983 (three teams from that district were WVU, G'town and Nova) or 1986 (three teams from that year were Bucknell, Army and Penn State), so the team went to NC's 2 of the 4 years you were there. I was a senior at Bucknell in the 1985 season and Navy edged us out by 12 points for the last spot and you guys also went in 1984.

Interesting post. But more than knowing the reasons for Navy's success, do you think Cantello has found the secret to immortality?

When I was running in college in the mid 70s we'd occasionally bump into Navy's teams and he was coaching then and even then, no everyone described him as a "veteran coach," an "experienced coach," etc.

So a couple years ago, after decades of paying only slight attention to collegiate running, I was at one of their early outdoor season meets and imagined that Al must likely be dead and if not he must have retired ages ago. Then I asked one of the competing coaches who was coaching Navy these days and was stunned. Do you know how old he is?

He is 79:

Al Cantello enters his 50th season at the Naval Academy and 45th as cross country head coach. Since his arrival at U.S.N.A. 50 years ago, the Midshipmen have been one of the most consistent men's cross country programs, both regionally and nationally.

A 1955 graduate of La Salle, Cantello was a two-time All-American in the javelin throw. In 2009, he was inducted into the Penn Relays Wall of Fame for becoming the first three-time winner in the javelin throw at the famed event. He was also enshrined as a charter member of La Salle's Hall of Athletes in 1961 and in the spring of 2012, Cantello was inducted in the inaugural class of the Middle Athletic Conference Hall of Fame.

A former world-class competitor in the javelin, Cantello once held every national and international record in the event. In 1959, he set a world record in the javelin and competed for the U.S. Olympic Team the following year in the 1960 Games in Rome. In 1964, Sport magazine named Cantello to its all-time track & field team and voted him the world's greatest competitor in the javelin.

Thanks. I knew he'd been a very good javelin thrower. I seem to recall Runner's World having a little article during the 70s in which he figured sort of prominently, can't recall the subject.

Northeast Men's Poll

1. Syracuse (3) 30

2. Iona 25

3. Columbia 21

4. Boston College (1) 19

5. Harvard 14

6. Providence 13

7. Boston University 13

8. Yale 12

9. Dartmouth 11

10. Connecticut 8

11. Massachusetts 8

12. Holy Cross 7

13. William & Mary 7

14. Quinnipiac 6

15. New Hampshire 6

16. Maine 6

17. Cornell 5

18. Fordham 4

19. Brown 3

20. Binghamtom 2

From today's rankings on the homepage.

Holy Cross ranked ahead of Cornell, Brown, and, most impressively, William & Mary in the Northeast? I said Godd'amn.

Where was this posted? Do you have a link?

I don't know where the quoted poll came from but the USTFCCCA poll link is below. It shows some similarity to the poll quoted but for the "surprise observations". Holy Cross isn't that good and everybody knows Bill and Mary is in the Great Lakes Region...:)

1 Iona

2 Syracuse

3 Columbia

4 Providence

5 Dartmouth

6 Cornell

7 Brown

8 Harvard

9 Boston University

10 Yale

11 Boston College

12 Buffalo

13 Army

14 Central Connecticut State

15 New Hampshire

That's the LetsRun poll

Interesting, Chris Johnson is running on his own at Paul Short. Why is Colgate so afraid of putting the rest of its team in the Gold meet?

http://www.paulshortxcrun.com/2012CollegeMenAssignments.pdf

LU wrote:

Interesting, Chris Johnson is running on his own at Paul Short. Why is Colgate so afraid of putting the rest of its team in the Gold meet?

http://www.paulshortxcrun.com/2012CollegeMenAssignments.pdf

Because the rest of the team isn't very good

That's interesting. Can you select the race you wish to run in? The site calls them "Race Assignments" I wonder if the same thing is happening with Princeton on the women's side?