........PSAC.......

RMAC wrote:

I just ask - Ok State, Arkansas, Oregon, Stanford, Wisconsin, Colorado,Georgetown. Excluded all PSAC schools since we are talking "real" athletes. I do not think you want the results.

If you REALLY inquired those coaches, I promise you that nearly all of them would provide an unqualified opinion that Doug Watts could've been a highly successful coach at a prominent Division 1 program.

It is simply silly and uninformed to state otherwise.

My post was with respect to only Doug Watts.

Regarding the remainder of the PSAC, I do not know enough of the people to provide opinion.

So you agree then that the RMAC coaches are still in D2 because they can't cut it as a D1 coach right?

bring it! wrote:

So you agree then that the RMAC coaches are still in D2 because they can't cut it as a D1 coach right?

YES

I think the RMAC people just come on here and bash us because they're jealous they don't have the longest thread on Letsrun

Watts is also in one of the worst regions in D2....any of those teams you mentioned in D1 look at there results at nationals. I am affliated with the Atlantic region and I am saying besides maybe one or two other regions we are the worst in the D2

I can't speak for all of the D2 coaches being capable of coaching at a top tier D1 school but I can say that Doug Watts could coach at that level having run for him many years ago. Our team regularly beat teams from the MAC when the MAC was more competitive on the national level and we were 2nd at the Notre Dame invite defeating #6 Michigan and finishing 15 points behind #5 Wisconsin. At that time Watts was being courted by D1 schools to coach there but he chose to stay at Edinboro for many reasons. In his career at Edinboro he has won 2 NAIA titles (the NAIA was more competitive that it is now and defeated a Kenyan contingent from Eastern New Mexico led by Munich bronze medalist Mike Boit) plus 3 Division 2 national titles in the 80's as well. There have been several high finishes near the top over the years as well. The Boro hasn't been as competitve on the national level as of late as they don't have the financial resources they once had. The boro alums are working on improving that situation. Those who are critics of Doug Watts don't judge his ability to coach D1 on just his results over the last few years, judge it on a career. We had a team mate, Mark Muggleton, run for the boro for his first 2 seasons and then due to massive budget cuts in the athletic budget transferred to Arkansas and ran there for John McDonnel and had a lot of success at Arkansas earning All American honors in cross country and ran 8:30 for 2 miles defeating Craig Virgin on his home track at Illinois in the process. He later ran on the US national cross country team. Mark Muggleton ran for both Doug Watts and John McDonnel and ask Mark Muggleton who is the better coach, you might be surprised at who he would choose. Doug Watts could definitely have been successful at any level if given the resources to do so and I suspect that Joe Vigil would have done ok along with Damon Martin and others.

Kutztown, West Chester, and, ESU all have very good location. All are within 90 minutes or less or both NYC and Philly. Add in Reading and Allentown and there are 4 really good cities to recruit out of. Not to mention District 1 being right there and plenty of Jersey kids, those schools are close to the talent but not too far out in the middle of no where.

It seems to me like the schools that are most successful in the conference (Ship, Edinboro, Haven) are teams primarily composed of kids from the area where they are at. Ship dominates recruiting in Central PA, pulling in some pretty top notch recruits that could have easily gone D1.. Lock Haven has to go a bit further to get recruits, but for the most part all of the kids who run there are PA kids. Edinboro has also taken some big recruits from their area in recent years, with Ben Hahn and Garth Watson being two of them.

A seemingly untapped region as far is our conference goes is the Pittsburgh area.. District 7 is consistently one of the best high school districts in the state, right up there with District 3 when it's obvious District 1 is at the top. But the schools in the area of District 7 (IUP, Cal U, Slippery Rock) have not been able to pull in the big runners from District 7 in recent years (at least since SRU brought in Weiss/Geddis). Why do you think this is? It seems to me that the recent trend for the best runners in this area is to stick to the traditional D1 Pittsburgh Schools (look at Duquesne's roster, it's pretty much a Western PA powerhouse: Van Kooten, Spisak, Dean, Stauffer, McElwain.. same with Pitt: Josh Christopher being the big name)

depends how you define the region. We really only had 2 people from Central PA.

Of our (Ship's) top 8 this year we had:

Beegle- Gettysburg (regional)

Schleander- Shippensburg (regional)

Rissel- Virginia (not so much)

Gillete- Parkland (not regional)

Ed Buck- O'Hara (not regional)

Stetler- CB South (not regional)

Neyhart- Kutztown (not regional)

Brandon Boyer- MD (not regional)

I don't think we're dominated by any particular area. The only place we don't really have recruits from is Western PA.

I'm trying to figure out which PSAC alum have broken 28 minutes for 10K. I believe Carney & Spence have the two top times as follows:

James Carney, 27:43

Steve Spence, 27:51

But, trying to figure out if there is anybody else who has ever dipped below 28 minutes. I don't think so, but thought maybe some of the older folks on here (Platt?) might know.

Thanks.

Hoovis

I'm not sure if anyone else mentioned this, so I apologize if I'm repeating it. But I came across a great article about Chris Clark the other day...

http://pa.milesplit.us/articles/32406

is it true that your team dislikes you??? a lot

Burgy_The_Bear wrote:

I'm not sure if anyone else mentioned this, so I apologize if I'm repeating it. But I came across a great article about Chris Clark the other day...

http://pa.milesplit.us/articles/32406

.

I was surprised to see them talk and bring up his right eye. I mean... it's pretty much been an elephant in the room up until now. We all know it, but no one was going to ask him about it. I didn't know the story of how it actually happened though, I thought I heard someone say a car accident. It was a good article on Chris, though. I hope he runs great in Houston.

Chris Clark, 1:04:37 Half Marathon in Houston today. 16th overall. That's pretty damn good, ladies and gentlemen.

Also qualified him for Olympic marathon trials.

iup alum nicole blaesser also ran well. 13th i believe. congrats! nice to see some psac alums running well on the national scene.

That's a decent mile team Ship has. Five guys under 4:20 in the same meet, bring on the Big Ten for them

not sure what "bring on the big 10 for them" means... but it was pretty impressive that they did that without their top 2 milers beegle (4:14) and neyhart (3:52)

who is Dustin Adams of ship? He ran 15:20 yesterday, i never heard of him before. Looks kind of like his coach, steve spence...