One of the best XC meets ever held in North America (you're including Canada too, how nice)?
From a competition stand point it was great to see the Oregon men v the Stanford men, followed by the Washington women v the Oregon women, on a neutral course go head to head. Plus there were a load of quality individuals in both races to keep them from being complete dual meets. Plus, great efforts on the part of all the runners. Anyone at the finish line could see the toll this race took on these guys and gals, as many dropped to the ground just past the finish line, exhausted. Yes, one of the best XC races I've ever seen. Good job making that happen USC.
Well organized? How hard is it to make sure 2 races, an hour apart, go off on time? Well USC made it look easy and did a great job at it.
Well planned? How hard is it to make a spectator-friendly course? Not too terribly hard when you stick to the 4 X 2,000 meter lap format. And it's on a fairly flat golf course. And you stick a dog-leg that goes up one fairway and back on the adjoining one to add an extra couple of easy-access viewing points to an otherwise big circle. USC pulled this off rather well too.
How hard is it to measure a course so that it is exactly the correct distance for each race? Well, there's some debate about how well that job went. If the course was short, there was plenty of room to move the starting line back, as well as the finish line.
How hard is it to create a proper XC course with some XC-type terrain on it? Maybe put a hill on it somewhere? Well, pretty hard if you are stuck with a golf course in Long Beach. I wonder if there are any USC alumni on the board of directors, or such, at Skylinks?
How hard is it to design a course that doesn't have a dog-leg that loops back around in such away that the spectators start cutting in front of the last 1/3 of the runners just to get to the next point in the course in time to see the lead pack? Maybe a little fore thought on crowd control would have been prudent. This, of course, was the flip-side to that extra effort to make the course spectator friendly. Turns out the course is now runner un-friendly. Really shameful USC.
Was this really one of the best XC meets ever held in North America? One of what? One of the top 10? No. One of the top 100, probably not. I just saw much better meet management, organization and spectator friendliness, not to mention course design, last week at the Mt SAC Invitational.