Washington State Meet

Middle Distance Coach wrote:

Shawn Kemp could fly! wrote:

[quote]marijuologist wrote:

Gig Harbor pwns n00bs

Logan Carroll 15:08, Wolfgang Beck 15:10, Tristan Peloquin 15:16.

Not as hot of a time trial race as 3A, but Gig just went put on a team clinic.

I said earlier this season on this forum that GH was headnshoulders above anyone else in WA State. No one believed me at the time. The level of training they're doing is essentially college level stuff. Hopefully next time you guys will believe me.[/quote

This GH team may well be one of the greatest HS CC teams in the history of the sport. I would lay money on it.

Mead used to have some pretty good teams...

Distance Maniac wrote:

Middle Distance Coach wrote:

Logan Carroll 15:08, Wolfgang Beck 15:10, Tristan Peloquin 15:16.

Not as hot of a time trial race as 3A, but Gig just went put on a team clinic.

I said earlier this season on this forum that GH was headnshoulders above anyone else in WA State. No one believed me at the time. The level of training they're doing is essentially college level stuff. Hopefully next time you guys will believe me.[/quote

This GH team may well be one of the greatest HS CC teams in the history of the sport. I would lay money on it.

Distance Maniac wrote:

Middle Distance Coach wrote:

Logan Carroll 15:08, Wolfgang Beck 15:10, Tristan Peloquin 15:16.

Not as hot of a time trial race as 3A, but Gig just went put on a team clinic.

I said earlier this season on this forum that GH was headnshoulders above anyone else in WA State. No one believed me at the time. The level of training they're doing is essentially college level stuff. Hopefully next time you guys will believe me.[/quote

This GH team may well be one of the greatest HS CC teams in the history of the sport. I would lay money on it.

Whatever money you'd put on it would be loss.

They are a great team who MIGHT win NXN this year. They however are not anywhere close to being "one of the best ever". I guess "anywhere close" is rather subjective though.

I will say it's rough that when you are compared to the states all-time best team you're comparing them to the best team the sport has ever seen = 1993 MEAD.

Congrats to them on a great state meet. Not trying to diminish what they did. North Central ran great as well. NXN Northwest will be a great meet throwing in Maton and central catholic...etc.

(this being off the top of my head)

Considering the guys that are likely to be at NXN, I'd say he has a good shot to finish top 5, and maybe win but not the favorite. Given how DeLaRosa has struggled (compared to where he should have been), I think Cerake Geberkidane is a little better than the rest of the field and should be the favorite, and Tony Russell (WC Henderson PA) would probably enter the race as the top challenger. Anderson and Bryce Millar (FM) would probably be third/fourth on the list.

I can't think of anyone else... FYI, the rating for Anderson's race should probably be around 200-202. If he duplicated that race at NXN, that would only leave Anderson out against the strongest fields (2010 with Verzbicas/Cheserek/Lutz, 2007 with Derrick/Lowe) in the past.

Not so fast.

Gig Harbor definitely has an all-time top 4. The only question is whether their #5 is strong enough for them to be mentioned as one of the best all-time teams. For my money, I'd say they are stronger than York 2004, which puts them in the conversation at least. Hard to say yet whether they are better than Arcadia 2010, York 1999, Mead 1993 or any of the others you might want to bring up. We'll know more after next week, and also after NXN.

By the way, comparing Arcadia's 2010 state race vs. Gig Harbor's, I come up with a 26-29 edge for Gig Harbor (with a ~10 second difference between the courses). It would take a 7 second difference between the courses for Arcadia 2010 to pull ahead of Gig Harbor 27-28.

The level of training they're doing is essentially college level stuff.

They are running fast because they have an convergence of talent. Nothing against their coach but he doesn't know anything that Patty Ley and Joel Wingard didn't.

Gotta shout out to 4A second place Redmond Mustangs with great pack running and top runner just 16th.

Northwest master wrote:

Gotta shout out to 4A second place Redmond Mustangs with great pack running and top runner just 16th.

Ok shout out, but they finished 100pts behind GH.

"College level stuff"? What level of college are you talking about? NAIA or D1? It's great to be excited about a really good high school team but lets not get carried away. 15:08 on a course that's probably right at 3 miles is definitely good but it's not that good. If we're talking D1, 15:08 on an equivalent difficulty course would bring you through maybe mid-pack for 3 miles of an 8K.

I'd venture to guess anyone on this board that ran or is running for a university would say their high school training, no matter how hard, paled in comparison to how they trained in college.

asdfghjkl wpppp wrote:

The level of training they're doing is essentially college level stuff.

They are running fast because they have an convergence of talent. Nothing against their coach but he doesn't know anything that Patty Ley and Joel Wingard didn't.

So how much difference does it make to have a good coach? Are any coaches really good or bad or is it just a matter of having talented athletes? Just curious because our team loves our coaches but don't think they are very knowledgeable and we have talked to the Gig Harbor guys and it seems like they all know a lot about running. So I guess what I'm wondering is that their coach was like a professional runner so is it just that what he knows or learned doesn't matter for high school and it just makes a difference in college? How does someone know if someone is a good coach or not or if its just coincidence that their new coach came at the same time really good kids are there that would just be good anyway? maybe watchout or someone smart who knows could share too?

Comical wrote:

"College level stuff"? What level of college are you talking about? NAIA or D1? I'd venture to guess anyone on this board that ran or is running for a university would say their high school training, no matter how hard, paled in comparison to how they trained in college.

70-90mpw fellow. Not that many college programs are doing much more than that.

Obviously, it can make a huge difference between a great program and well, a weak program. If you have a coach that possesses state of the art knowledge, combined with passion and a love for the kids, then those are the ingredients for greatness.

Comical wrote:

"College level stuff"? What level of college are you talking about? NAIA or D1? It's great to be excited about a really good high school team but lets not get carried away. 15:08 on a course that's probably right at 3 miles is definitely good but it's not that good. If we're talking D1, 15:08 on an equivalent difficulty course would bring you through maybe mid-pack for 3 miles of an 8K.

I'd venture to guess anyone on this board that ran or is running for a university would say their high school training, no matter how hard, paled in comparison to how they trained in college.

The course is a full 5000m with rolling hills. For a state with the history of Washington, only 5 runners have gone under 15 on it...

Talked to an official at the race, it has changed a little bit going from 2.25-2.75 compared from previous years to this year.

There is no good way to quantify how much a good coach contributes to a multi-year progression of an athlete, so I'll just sum up this conversation by stating the obvious:

The kids at Gig Harbor this year are very good. Gig Harbor has had very good coaches in the past, and so far it seems that their current coach (an 800m professional athlete) is yet another good coach as well. There are other very good coaches out there, both those who have competed professionally and those that have not. What makes a team great is the combination of talent and good coaching. You can have a pretty good team with one or the other, but need both to be great.

We don't know how good Gig Harbor would have been this year, or in the last two years that Mark Wiczorek has coached the team, if there was another coach in his place. I'm sure they still would have been competitive for the state title, and probably would have won this year with only a mediocre coach - the kids are very talented (most of the kids that were there under the previous coach continued to be successful in the coaching transition in 2011, including this year's senior leaders Logan Carroll and Wolfgang Beck). But the fact that they won it and qualified for NXN in 2011, and look like they might be an All-Time type team this year, implies that their coach certainly is pretty good regardless of the benefit of having the talented athletes he's inherited.

The Northwestener wrote:

Talked to an official at the race, it has changed a little bit going from 2.25-2.75 compared from previous years to this year.

Yeah, there were three slight changes. None of the changes were significant enough to cause the race to run more than a second or two differently than the past few years.

What kind of 2M times would you expect from their top 2 this spring?

I agree with most of what you said, except I firmly believe that their #5 is not near good enough for anyone to make the "all-time great" claim. If XC was scored 1-4 I might retract my statement, but it's not.

I really don't know if Gig Harbor will win NXN. Does anyone really think they are going to dominate CBA or American Fork? To be an all-timer (in my book) one should be head and shoulders above the nation (unless it happens to be a year of multiple all-times).