Princeton and Cornell recruiting - what the hell?

who are the club runners?

also, just not every runner on the XC team is a stud. quite a few of the slower guys on the team are walk-on with HS PRs in the 420s/low 430s. I

many teams "A" squads were racing at pre-nats or wisco.

"B" squad members could include 800m type kids, walk ons and kids that are coming back from injuries, illnesses or are just freshman that have not yet developed. Really not that strange.

I didn't make the school team in college and I was a sub-15 guy, so I routinely beat some varsity runners. Apparently the standards to walk on were much tougher than for recruits, who often didn't pan out. At pretty much any school, there will always be SOME club runners who can beat SOME varsity runners SOME of the time.

Wait, are you comparing results from last week with results from yesterday? Not exactly the same conditions, no?

I was spectating at the meet yesterday. Just in moving around the course--at less than a racing effort, obviously--I felt pretty uncomfortable. It may have been more the humidity than the heat/sun, but that was not a really fun day to be racing, I'd say.

Also, the week before may have been *the* race of the season for some club guys. It certainly wasn't for the Ivies, given that their Heps meet (conference championship) is two weeks away--and that neither Princeton nor Cornell ran its top guys, who (as someone said above) raced elsewhere. Yesterday you would have seen the two schools' B/C guys.

Believe me, you don't have to worry about PU's or CU's recruiting. The Tigers perennially bring in a good crop, and did *not* break tradition this time; and this year the Big Red recruited one of their best distance groups in recent memory--I can only recall one bunch, from the RoJo era, that rivals this one.

Sorry you didn't get the show that you might have hoped for yesterday--come back in two weeks!

Gorsline and Campbell. Ennitz (I think) is a grad and no longer eligible. The weather conditions seemed pretty much the same to me. I haven't seen much in the Heps from Cornell mid-d the last couple of years. Mid-distance nearly shut out in 800m, 1600m, 5k in winter, spring.

Colleges are full of many good college level athletes that don't want to adhere to the practice schedule and are focused on their future. This does not mean these students are not training, or out of shape. It just means they are running on their own and are still talented.

Tiger94 wrote:

How is it that club members are beating varsity members for both Princeton and Cornell? Who are the coaches? Who is recruiting? I was at Princeton for the club race a week ago and the invitational yesterday (officiating at one, helping at another). I was surprised that club runners had better times than varsity runners. Is that common?

I am going out on a limb and say that you are a club member.

You absolutely can not make a team vs. club comparison based on one race without knowing what the team was trying to achieve in that race. Sounds like you had a great race, but you don't know what is going on with the team. It is possible they practiced the day before, some guys where held out, some guys may have been told to run it as a workout or at a certain pace, etc., etc. Most NCAA teams only race their full squad, all out about 3 times a season, changes are you caught them one of the other 4 times. Btw, if you are really that good and don't have an attitude problem, you should be on the team help them out since you think you are better. Stop by the coaches office and make your case to run a couple of practices to prove yourself, that's all it takes -or if you really ran as great as you think you did, the coach will contact you...else, shut up.

The "A" Princeton team was at Wisconsin two weeks and and the real Cornell team was at preNCAAs. So you saw their "B" team runners or 800 guys who do varsity XC to stay fit. A good club XC runner might be able to beat them.

The week before the conference meet as well you are going to see guys not on Varsity running. So you likely didn't see anyone on the varsity running either week.

Many schools have post collegiate runners that hang around and maybe train with the team some. It is not uncommon for these "club" runners to be competitive with even the "A" team.

Both places are for democrats/fairies.

Jay1989 wrote:

I haven't seen much in the Heps from Cornell mid-d the last couple of years. Mid-distance nearly shut out in 800m, 1600m, 5k in winter, spring.

Perhaps you need glasses, Jay.

Selected Cornell results in mid-distance races at indoor Heps in "the last couple of years" (I've included the 500, which some consider mid-distance):

2013 indoor: 500 2nd, 5th, 6th; 800 1st, 6th; 1000 2nd; mile 2nd; 4x800 1st

2014 indoor: 500 3rd, 4th; 800 1st, 4th; DMR 4th; 4x800 5th.

Those don't look like near shut-outs to me.

It's fair to say the Big Red have not had as good results in the last couple of outdoor Heps. Still, I know some people extend "mid-distance" to 3000m--anything going on in the steeplechase? Oh, yeah: 2013 2nd and 5th, 2014 3rd.

The middle-/distance races have certainly not been Cornell's greatest source of points in recent years, but they've held their own--in what may be the toughest MD conference in the US.

I think Michigan had a girl who did triathlons that would be right up there with their varsity. She won NIRCAs. They have a very good club but I doubt anyone besides her would get onto varsity for cross country.

A lot of the time it's people who dropped the sport because of the huge time commitment but are still good because they're D1 caliber athletes.

Humidity?! In the middle of October? You guys crack me up.

Unless anything has changed at Princeton from three years ago, they don't take walk-ons at all any more (men, anyway). Used to be that the standard was a 5:00-pace 5K on the track at the start of XC (so, 15:37). A few people over the years achieved that.

Can anyone confirm or deny? If it's still true, it's a shame and really does send a bad message. To my knowledge there hasn't ever been a club runner at Princeton who wanted to run varsity and would have contributed, but it does happen every so often (Exhibit A: Van Voorhis at Wisconsin).

... and if I'm right about the walk-on situation, this is unhelpful bullshit...

There are no Cornell club runners who are anywhere near as good as anyone on the team. There are no club runners who could/have beaten any of the runners on the team. Not sure what is being referenced here. . .

PR-Cass wrote:

Humidity?! In the middle of October? You guys crack me up.

We were there. Presumably you weren't.

By the way, it was 70 degrees (65 at 10pm) in NYC today, in the last week of October.