1971 NCAA Cross Country Championships

Are any of the coaches who had runners in this race still active? Coach Walker from ETSU is still around and kicking, any others?

Cornelius Cusack????

I never knew.

Slack got 1st in col div a week before university div shown here. Based on my finish in col div and col runners behind Slack @ Univ race, - I should have gotten at least 10th ... but noooooooooooo. Got about 45th and stormed out of the chute immediately after finish line, pretty mad at the poor showing.

He was a 1:53 HS 880 guy. Slack was a major player in mile/1500 wars for a good while after this race. He won the col division the next year. not sure how he did in 72 univ race

Malmo ... did you compete in that 77 AAU meet? Is that 77 meet the last one before we got the newly named but equally dysfunctional TAC?

I didn't have a qualifying mark for the 77 meet, but I competed anyway. Did pretty good.

1971 was good wrote:

Penn was 3rd - wondering who they had at the time. Was Dave Merrick there?

Merrick, Fikes, Julio Piazza, Karl Thornton. All pretty good runners.

Guys that good finishing so far back today would get critisized on letsrun. Back then, it was a lot of very good runners in a very good field.

Didn't know Dave Wottle had some range, solid base coming into the next years gold medal run over 800m

I think Wottle had several high placings...I was looking for the thread that had links to complete results from NCAA cross over the years, but didn't find.

Remember Wottle had Sid Sink to train with at that time (Sink had just graduated but was still training in BG), and Sid was a pretty good CC runner.

Thanks, gubu. Wottle doesn't appear in the '70 listing, but was 30 in '69. Hurt?

Those videos/results are great. I grew up living on the Fox Den Golf Course and ran on it frequently. I remember reading Pre's book back in high school and being dumbfounded that he won NCAA's right in my back yard. I used to do a long run every Xmas out on the golf course before my parents moved away. It's an extremely hilly/difficult course to run on.

Great stuff. Thanks, malmo.

Slack finished 40th in '72

malmo wrote:

I didn't have a qualifying mark for the 77 meet, but I competed anyway. Did pretty good.

OK ... now I feel like an ass .... nice American record there. Google is a powerful tool .....

8. Ed Leddy

He won the first road race I ever ran, a 10-mile in 1978, in 49 minutes.

Great to see a throwback thread about 1971 XC, as it included the high water mark for Penn which featured that year (1971-1972) probably one of the best all-around Heps teams ever if you include track. The XC team scored what is still the lowest score in men's Heps XC history (19) with Dave Merrick, Bob Childs, Denis Fikes, Julio Piazza, and Karl Thornton. In the 1972 track season Penn went on to win indoor and outdoor Heps as well as IC4A's (defeating Villanova) along with a victory in the shuttle hurdles at Penn Relays and a NCAA championship for Bruce Collins. Coach Tuppeny would be quite happy with this thread.

Long Beach State in 10th ?

That 10-miler must have been the 3rd National Great Race in Nashville, TN on Labor Day - right?

calsnailer wrote:

That 10-miler must have been the 3rd National Great Race in Nashville, TN on Labor Day - right?

Yes it was.

BillCarr wrote:

Great to see a throwback thread about 1971 XC, as it included the high water mark for Penn which featured that year (1971-1972) probably one of the best all-around Heps teams ever if you include track. The XC team scored what is still the lowest score in men's Heps XC history (19) with Dave Merrick, Bob Childs, Denis Fikes, Julio Piazza, and Karl Thornton. In the 1972 track season Penn went on to win indoor and outdoor Heps as well as IC4A's (defeating Villanova) along with a victory in the shuttle hurdles at Penn Relays and a NCAA championship for Bruce Collins. Coach Tuppeny would be quite happy with this thread.

Funny thing, when Tuppeny was recruiting me I wasn't even aware that Merrick was at Penn. Went to dinner with Fikes and Collins.