HEPS track and field--OUTDOOR 2012

xy wrote:

My own opinion, if it were me or my kid, would be to not do the indoor season, get a physical and mental break from it, catch up on school work, do base miles, and have a fun and successful outdoor season.

Could not agree more. I often wonder if these distance guys who run XC(all levels - HS, College) would have better outdoor seasons if they took this approach.

NJ Guy wrote:

xy wrote:

My own opinion, if it were me or my kid, would be to not do the indoor season, get a physical and mental break from it, catch up on school work, do base miles, and have a fun and successful outdoor season.

Could not agree more. I often wonder if these distance guys who run XC(all levels - HS, College) would have better outdoor seasons if they took this approach.

Maybe in a perfect world that would make sense. But in looking at many of these schools' schedules, it strikes me how short the college outdoor season in the Northeast can be. It has already been mentioned that the squad limits at the Ivy championships are 36, so many (or even most) of the athletes on these teams will have their last competition on May 1. There is the Ivy meet on May 7 or so for the top 36 on each roster but certainly not all will go on to IC4As or NCAAs...therefore it strikes me that the vast majority of Ivy athletes will be done by May 7 and many as early as May 1. Since most outdoor meets in the Northeast begin the April 1 weekend you are talking about a 4 or 5 week outdoor season. That's not very long to have a great showing, unless you've been getting started through indoors and are ready to go come April. In high school, kids have the luxury of racing themselves into shape with dual meets and a longer outdoor season. These college kids may not have the same luxury. (Although it does seem like the very top athletes at the NCAA level don't race much, but remember we're talking about the Ivy level and those elite athletes have seasons that go until June).

Anyway, these aren't 28 year old, professional runners who have lots of experience and can show up and expect a high quality performance right off the bat. Even college athletes still are learning a lot by competing (I'm not talking about just distance runners, remember, but really all the technical event people as well) so I'm not surprised that teams like Cornell, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth have so many meets on their schedule. They really do have big rosters and seem to be catering not just to a few NCAA-level people on their team but developmental athletes as well.

Sound analysis, I think.

A little history: I believe that Ithaca College (one of the stops in my coaching career, 30+ years ago) was one of the first schools in the Northeast to adopt the early-start, early-finish calendar. From the standpoint of facilities management, reducing heating expenses, and so forth, it made a lot of sense to them. (And their students liked the early finish, because it gave them first crack at summer jobs and internships.)

With a handful of exceptions (NB: a few of the exceptions are Ivy League universities), most other Northeastern colleges have adopted some variety of early-start/early-finish. It's just completely changed collegiate spring-sports seasons--all sports, not just t&f. Now sports like baseball and softball (ignoring the fall component of their seasons) typically head to Southern climes, both between semesters and during Spring Break. They realistically have to, to get enough games in.

Track is not that different. I remember well, when I coached at IC, that one year our outdoor season started on April 16 (a contest that had been scheduled earlier was snowed out) and ended May 1--six meets in 16 days. Without indoor meets, none of the guys would have been in anything close to competitive shape by the time that last contest (our conference meet) rolled around. And we certainly could have benefited from some Southern warm-weather meets in March, such as the Ivies have scheduled.

The reality is that collegiate track--which used, legitimately, to be thought of as having two seasons--simply has one now, with part of that season contested indoors and part outside. The "no rest for the weary" bit is just a recognition of the reality for spring (collegiate) sports in the Northeast.

Was the Cornell runner DQ'd for his stunt at 3:25?

DQ? wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypYOYt2OnVE&feature=related

Was the Cornell runner DQ'd for his stunt at 3:25?

I don't believe so, because he did not improve his position.

For some reason, I awoke at 2 am and decided to write some of the things that I think would make Heps better. Feel free to comment, argue, agree or come up with your own fixes at http://www.HepsTrack.com.

A lot of common sense in those ideas. I find it hard that anyone could disagree with the Armory as the permanent site for indoors. Maybe Cornell & Dartmouth folks because of the distance? But you are spot on with the point about alumni and fundraising.

Live webcast is also a no-brainer. The Princeton kids had no problem making it happen a couple years back in the fauxtrack days and as exciting as refreshing the results page at hepstrack is, it simply doesn't compare to actually seeing the races.

Eventwise for indoors 400 500 800 1000 is a little crazy... maybe go 200 400 600 1000? Mix it up from outdoor events and get some interesting sprinter/mid-distance match ups in the 600?

I'm pleased to see that some conferences are going with the old 600 YARDS as the race between the 400 and the 800. It certainly calls on an ability set that is not quite matched by the 400m (or even the 500m) and the 800.

Agghhh--I feel bad for the Big Red, who have taken their annual Spring Break trip to California. Apparently it's going to rain all day today at Northridge (site of their first meet of the trip), with a high in the mid-50s.

Meanwhile, Ithaca is sunny, with temps near 70...

I hope the Cali weather ameliorates as the week goes by, so the Cornell kids can get some good training in.

Sorry, missed it before: looks like Yale is also at that Northridge meet.

Rain or shine, my boyfriend John Schilkowsky is gonna do some big thangs... Cali swag d00d! #CUTF #sexycowboy #cuddleme

Brett Hoover wrote:

For some reason, I awoke at 2 am and decided to write some of the things that I think would make Heps better. Feel free to comment, argue, agree or come up with your own fixes at

http://www.HepsTrack.com

.

I like Brett's list.

The lack of a webcast is shameful.

I'm agnostic about the event list for indoors. The women should lose the 3k outside, but indoors is kind of weird anyway, so why not keep 'em all, and add the DMR for the women.

I'd like to see every Heps in NYC - Indoor at the Armory and outdoor at Ichan. At the very least, every indoor on a banked track - so either the Armory alone or in tandem with Harvard

Brett clarified that he meant logos and not shirt designs. I love the big letters on the singlets and was disappointed when Nike had had Princeton and Dartmouth drop them.

I'll add another

8. Teams with colors as their nicknames should be required to have those colors predominate in their uniforms. The Crimson and the Big Green should wear crimson and green. Too many white singlets at Heps! Conversely, Brown should not be required to wear brown - those unis from 5-6 years ago still give me nightmares. And congrats to Columbia this year for returning to a true Columbia Blue. If anyone should wear Columbia blue it should be, well, Columbia.

Grrrr...

So I've been trying the link for Yale's/Cornell's meet at Northridge (

http://www.gomatadors.com/sports/m-track/2011-12/releases/20120316rt1u6k

) all day, but have not figured out a way to get true "live results"--I just keep on getting only the hept/dec results from the last two days.

Does anybody know

a) Whether the meet *actually* was held as scheduled (yes, I read the press release that averred it would be); and

b) If so, how to get hold of results from its events?

Yale left after the 4x100's - the rain was coming down in torrents.

The Cornell people were mostly arriving as the Yale people were leaving, so I'm not sure what they did.

It was raining so hard for awhile that I wonder if the timing system made it through OK - several of the HS meets in SoCal that managed to compete had to switch to hand timing.

Yale Dad wrote:

Yale left after the 4x100's - the rain was coming down in torrents.

It was raining so hard for awhile that I wonder if the timing system made it through OK - several of the HS meets in SoCal that managed to compete had to switch to hand timing.

Thanks, YD!

I just hope everybody got through the day safely. Sounds like a horrendous experience.

Results are up:

http://static.psbin.com/0/h/kusv4v7kx99v14/2012_Invitational_Final.pdf

Looks like Cornell kept its people out of the 100/200, and several field events were cancelled--both wise decisions, surely.

Word is that, in the women's steeple, the water jump barrier was at the men's height for a few laps. That must have been a trip, though I hope not literally.

And--who knows--it might have been good prep for Heps (what am I saying? It's always sunny in Philadelphia.), or other championship meets this spring.

In addition, an early-season performance list is up:

http://www.tfrrs.org/lists/911.html

It doesn't include the Northridge marks yet, but there are still some interesting performances: Penn women, particularly in the "speed events" (all wind-legal), show some real strength, and Harvard men and (esp.) women look good in the field. Dartmouth men continue to progress, pretty much across the board; Dartmouth women also with lots of field strength.

The throwing events already look like they're going to be outrageous by the time the Heps meet rolls around. The men will have several *really* strong individuals, and all the women's throws should feature tight competitions (and quality performances in every scoring place).

I'm leaving the LRC board for a while. Hope to get to Phil. for Heps. Best of luck to all the Ivy teams and fans!

There will be one more weekend of Spring Break results, particularly for Cornell and Yale, while the other schools will have at least 2 weeks.

I am curious on how these early results will hold up for the rest of the season, particularly for sprints and horizontal jumps. The sprint results always seem to be at peak for spring break due to the (usually) better conditions outside of the Northeast. Can our sprinters really go any faster for Heps? The distances longer than a mile really don't mean much at this point since almost all of the top dogs won't compete until right before or at Heps. The throwers usually have a good progression/range during the outdoor season though. Then again, this is just what it looks like to me...

The online Yale schedule is incorrect - the SID department at Yale is sub-standard generally, and the coverage of our sports is especially bad - it's a student-intern rewriting what he finds on line.

Yale is back in New Haven and will not compete in Irvine next weekend. Their next meet (not on the schedule yet) will be at UConn on 3/31 in what one hopes is the not ironically named "Spring Invite".

Who knows? The weather in New Haven last week was better than the weather in Irvine, so this could be a warm Spring in the Northeast.