Ben Saarel won the Pac 12 5k over Grant Fisher - any chance he can contend at NCAAs?

Jjjjjjjji wrote:

REI wrote:[/b

...

Apart from the Ivy League (which is the strongest academically), the only other conference that is close to the PAC academically is the Big 10 (Nothwestern, MI, WI, MSU, Penn State, U of IL, Purdue, Ohio State, IN, MN, Rutgers.

??

ACC:

Duke, Notre Dame, Wake Forest, Boston College...

Duke and Wake Forest have to account for their hoops teams.....

blatter wrote:

running commenter wrote:

Yeah, they're both engineers I think

Fisher is Electrical Engineering

Saarel has a double major: Engineering Psychics and Computer Sci

Both are hard. Saarel's is harder, but Fisher goes to a harder school. I'd still say Saarel has to study more than Fisher. He'll have some pretty heavy duty math which Fisher will just scratch the surface of.

I don't know what "Engineering Psychics" is? Maybe where you predict the future of design in a certain field?

But having taken Electrical Engineering, I CAN tell you that no Engineering major (including Psychics) takes harder math than EE. Chem E is a harder major than EE, ME, or CE, but does not require harder math, but that is neither here nor there.

CS has much less rigorous math required than EE. I would say that a double major in those things is harder than almost any single major, but I can't predict which student is working harder until I know more about "Engineering Psychics".

What this thread has turned into shows how dorky and insecure many runners are.

Wow.

ShipYard wrote:

I've heard that Saarel only sleeps about 4-5 hours per night during the semester because he studies so much. Whether he's a perfectionist that can't abide not doing everything as best as he can, or his major really is that hard, I don't know, but that's the rumor. Fisher also has stagnated a bit this year--perhaps for a similar reason?

People here are mostly in their arm chairs not knowing what it takes to accomplish either face of Saarel's life. Most CS and Engineering courses at these renwoned universities overload the students with difficult co-weekly problem sets and/or projects that require high level math and a lot of time. The fact he maintains that workload and competes at a top level in the NCAA is not only impressive but also testament to his natural running talent. Normal kids his age would not be able to handle both. He handles school extremely well and can still pull off the sporting heroics in his spare time. That's the part which is amazing because there are only 24 hours in a day. Even if I had the running talent I'd really only be able to do well by focusing one of those three things (Engineering/Computer Science/Running).

I assume Saarel must study so much because he's not that smart.

Safe to say both of these guys are special in a true sense of the word. Not many people can endure the rigors of both at perform a very high level. Super impressive.

These are the guys that should be celebrated in our society. Not the retards on most football teams. Or football coaches talking about "graduation rates"....dudes who should not even be in college.....taking joke classes in joke majors. They "graduate" but can't spell their name.

reed wrote:

East Coast Guy wrote:

On Ben Saarel - just a good solid dude - he has some crazy hard major like Physics / Physics Engineering where he has a 3.9 GPA and he just won the PAC 12 Scholar Athlete award.

How can you say his major is crazy hard if you don't even know what it is?

don't be an idiot.

Engineering Physics at CU

https://www.colorado.edu/academics/programs/engineering-physics

Sounds like Grant Fisher in a few years may well be in the territory of Chris Lukezic (3:33/Air BnB) for richest former high caliber distance runner in the past generation.

the last laugh wrote:

thisguy wrote:

Generally those NCAA scholar athlete people have powder puff majors. Engineering is hard in the very tangible sense that you have to take more classes than everyone else and they are all difficult to do well in. I was a hard science major, but at least I could round out my schedule with some easy stats or lit classes.

Fisher, three time NCAA scholar athlete of the year (1xtrack, 2xXC), taking Electrical Engineering at Stanford, minor in Economics or computer science and will be doing his masters there... so I heard.