USATF LIVE Club Cross Country Nationals Thread Here

polevaultpower,

side with the athletes, not the bureaucrats. if im not mistaken, team indiana has a number of brooks athletes, along with derek scott who runs for puma and stephen haas who runs for new balance. there is pressure from the shoe companies to wear their race kits, and at the very least, wear their equipment, especially at usatf competitions. the guys travelled there, raced their hearts out, and now come up 4th instead of what should have been around 75 points and a close 3rd. this is absurd. reward the athletes for what they've done. they entered together and have a clear roster with their affiliation. this governing body does too much to try to hold back its' athletes. im embarrassed by usatf more and more as time goes by. side with the athletes, not the bureaucrats.

loves competition wrote:

polevaultpower,

side with the athletes, not the bureaucrats. if im not mistaken, team indiana has a number of brooks athletes, along with derek scott who runs for puma and stephen haas who runs for new balance. there is pressure from the shoe companies to wear their race kits, and at the very least, wear their equipment, especially at usatf competitions. the guys travelled there, raced their hearts out, and now come up 4th instead of what should have been around 75 points and a close 3rd. this is absurd. reward the athletes for what they've done. they entered together and have a clear roster with their affiliation. this governing body does too much to try to hold back its' athletes. im embarrassed by usatf more and more as time goes by. side with the athletes, not the bureaucrats.

I deal with the same issues with my team. Some of our athletes are sponsored by Brooks (who also sponsors our team) and sometimes we have other athletes with other sponsors.

The difference is, I pay attention to the rules... I work with people throughout the year to make sure we find a way for them to match for the relays in Track and for Club Nationals in cross country. And our team color is orange, so a lot of manufacturers don't even make anything in that color...

Anyway, if an athlete was in a situation with a sponsor where they could not match their teammates under any circumstances for one race in the year, then they wouldn't get to go on the trip to Club Nationals, because we know the rules and know they wouldn't be eligible.

It's a team championships. Look like a team one race out of the whole year...

Believe me, I am on the side of the athletes. But these are ADULT athletes who are perfectly capable of reading the rules. It's not a ridiculous rule that a team's jerseys need to match. I know the games committee is not _super_ picky about how closely they have to match, they just need to all be about the same color and about the same design.

I will say that I haven't actually seen the uniforms in question in this particular instance. My friend on the team says they were all the same color and that they tried to match.

The rule says, "basically identical for each member in color and style"... I support the rule being enforced, but not to a super picky degree. So I guess I would have to actually see the uniforms in this case...

It would be nice to see pictures of these athletes, and these so called "mis-matching" uniforms.

I think they looked fine to me.

This is suppose to be a race, not a beauty contest. If these athletes declare they're on the same team, then that should be good enough.

Me thinks, itsss goodss

the teams come out with new singlets from time to time and maybe you and some of your teammates show up to the race with different singlets. "may be disqualified" is the key phrase in that rule. They didn't have to be disqualified and should not have been just because they weren't all color coordinated.

What is the post meet party like, and has anyone been tasered yet?

Derek Scott does not live in Indiana or train with them. He lives in Va.

Its great they take such a simple sport like running over grass and hills and fuc5 it up with all kinds of rules and regulations and laws and guidelines and statutes to justify giving the lead sheep some kind of award and recognition at the finish and casting all non-compliants to a realm of disgrace and indignity.

LLLLLLDDDDLLLLLL wrote:

Derek Scott does not live in Indiana or train with them. He lives in Va.

The uniform rules may be good because it shows which of the teams are really 'teams'; ie, which of them run together at least several days per week, have been talking about this race for weeks in advance, and presumably at some point in the long time they spent together (warmups, cooldowns, stretching, traveling to smaller races during the year, etc) got to talking about what uniforms they would wear. Seems like a violation is much more likely to occur when you have guys living several states away trying to say they're on the team.

And the whole point of this race is to encourage the concept of a club system and get more local clubs to train together.

the dude with the funny hat wrote:

The uniform rules may be good because it shows which of the teams are really 'teams'; ie, which of them run together at least several days per week, have been talking about this race for weeks in advance, and presumably at some point in the long time they spent together (warmups, cooldowns, stretching, traveling to smaller races during the year, etc) got to talking about what uniforms they would wear. Seems like a violation is much more likely to occur when you have guys living several states away trying to say they're on the team.

That wasn't the issue in this case... the issue was that Team Indiana's jersey's are made by Brooks, and they had two guys with other sponsors who couldn't wear Brooks stuff.

I look forward to seeing pictures of the offending jerseys...

That seems like BS. When Nike sponsors U.S. gear for international championships, Adidas athletes are wearing the swoosh on the singlet(but Adidas shoes) with everyone else.

polevaultpower wrote:

That wasn't the issue in this case... the issue was that Team Indiana's jersey's are made by Brooks, and they had two guys with other sponsors who couldn't wear Brooks stuff.

I look forward to seeing pictures of the offending jerseys...

Have fun:

http://www.usatf.org/events/2010/USATFClubXCChampionships/photos/index.asp

polevaultpower wrote:

I look forward to seeing pictures of the offending jerseys...

I'll work on getting the photos uploaded later, but it's pretty clear Haas's jersey looked nothing like Brooks jerseys. I'm looking at one of my finish photos that has Dentamo, Reid (aggies), and Haas and Dentamo's jersey says Brooks and is a florescent yellow, and Haas's is black. Durek is in a Puma jersey that also looks nothing like the other Team Indiana athletes.

None of the jersey's I saw say Team Indiana on them (on the front at least). So as far as the spirit of the uniform rules (i.e. identifying the team) it's pretty clear they're in violation of them and it's not some silly thing like wrong color piping.

So then how did the Running Republic of Boulder get away with it, with 4 Nike athletes in unmarked Nike kits and one adidas athletes? None of their uniforms had their team name. No idea what the adidas athlete was wearing, looking forward to pictures being posted.

There is no rule that says the club name or logo has to be on the jersey. The rule says, "basically identical for each member in color and style, and must be clearly visible throughout the race"

stood next to running republic on the start line. one athlete had on the nike top to match their teammates with adidas shorts and adidas spikes.

Maybe if all these teams with members that are sponsored by different companies purchased WHITE singlets with their team name on them, then each athlete could run in their own brand...? I fail to see the point of having a CLUB championship when you can't even get 7 matching uniforms for your team.

Keith Stone wrote:

It was a good day overall, decent weather compared to the last two years and fairly fast times. There was a note where they posted the results that the 10K course was 6.29 not 6.21.

I'm not sure about the distance situation, but the mile markers were also messed up for th 10K. Normally I would say that exact distance dosn't really matter in cross, but come on, this was a national championship. The five mile mark was probably wrong because my 4-5 mile split was almost half a minute slower than all my others (an I was still passing plenty of people), and the six mile mark was definatley off because my 6 mile to 10km split was only 45 seconds!