FM SWEEPS NXN BOYS & GIRLS!

There success is amazing. Which makes them like the Yankees, very easy to root against.

Running competitively is a lot of fun as long as you are improving. Once you plateau, it becomes mentally draining. I think if the FM kids perhaps don't do well in college it is because they have already come close to this plateau, and so are mentally drained.

Again, kudos to their success. But, if I had a good high school runner and had to relocate to the Syracuse area for work, FM is not where I would want my kid to go.

runn wrote:

I coach at a school about 4 times smaller than FM and I have 1 boy who would make their top 5 and another who would crack the top 7.

They train hard and are dedicated. If we have 4 times the students we could possibly challenge them.

Laughable. Because you have 2 decent individuals you think if you had 4 times the enrollment you would have a national caliber team? That's not how it works.

Here's a Manlius grad who seems to have done OK on and off the track:

http://www.albanystudentpress.net/fanning-del-fava-earn-division-i-all-academic-honors/

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Mojo Jerkin wrote:

There success is amazing. Which makes them like the Yankees, very easy to root against.

Running competitively is a lot of fun as long as you are improving. Once you plateau, it becomes mentally draining. I think if the FM kids perhaps don't do well in college it is because they have already come close to this plateau, and so are mentally drained.

Again, kudos to their success. But, if I had a good high school runner and had to relocate to the Syracuse area for work, FM is not where I would want my kid to go.

liverpool is just like compton, ca

may want to rethink that choice.

Having a larger enrollment school could actually hurt your chances of having more athletes on the team...many larger enrollment schools will have a team for each sport at up to 6 levels-middle school(sometimes even broken down to a team for 7th grade and a team for 8th grade), freshmen, sophomore, JV, varsity. At a minimum they have middle school, JV, and varsity. This means no one gets cut until they're a junior that can't make the JV squad. If I'm a junior and I don't make the soccer team, I don't go out for cross country, I go home and sit on the coach. If I'm a freshmen who doesn't make the soccer team, then yeah, I might go join cross country. 'Leftovers' may not be the ideal talent pool but success in long distance running comes from hard work over time and bodies are bodies.

Being at a larger school is as much of a disadvantage as being born into wealth.

Come on man...

F-M would be a mid-sized 5A school in Texas (6A is larger)- in other words, there are many schools with much larger enrollment. Of course It is an advantage to have a larger enrollment but there are so many schools with enrollment larger than 1500 that do not win championships.

1500 kids isn't that big at all nowadays compared to many schools out there

Carmel from Indiana (girls 3rd place) has an enrollment of well over 4000

Berkshire Billy wrote:

Here's a Manlius grad who seems to have done OK on and off the track:

http://www.albanystudentpress.net/fanning-del-fava-earn-division-i-all-academic-honors/

.

No one has ever won the argument that FM graduates perform well (similar projection as in high school). I personally have heard that a few of them even agree that the training at FM kind of burnt them out (in a way), there was nothing left to accomplish, or the coaching style of their college coach differer too much from the Aris's. It's hard to grind at that level for a long time and kids find different life pursuits when they enter college. HOWEVER....

What everyone keeps overlooking is that they WIN. And not only do they win, but they win consistently year after year. Who cares how they perform after high school, in college, ect. They WIN! The win arguably the most important high school xc meet besides Footlocker. Almost 99% of DI college runners stop competitive running to perform other careers after college. Is that because their training sucked? Most likely no, it's because they find new things to do, new things to accomplish. The same can be said of a high school team like FM. Those kids accomplish something so big by the time they graduate high school that the incentive to continue the grind is less when they enter college. Really what you (posters) are revealing by saying FM "never get better after high school", is that WINNING NXN is something that you have never accomplished, which caused you to pursue running into college and to post negative comments about FM's high school team. Congrats to them.

I think the reason a lot of girls don't run well at the NCAA level - regardless of what HS they ran for - is that most NCAA coaches truly do suck. My daughter visited over a dozen schools & met with coaches for each. I was shocked at how inept most of them appeared. We picked what we thought was one of the better coaches, and even he turned out to really suck... There are probably a dozen really good D1 women's coaches out there, and maybe another dozen scattered over D2, D3, NAIA..

Congrats to the FM boys and girls, clearly an incredible performance by their team.

I was at NXN this weekend and heard many frankly distressing things about the FM coach (disclaimer- I don't know if these are true, and am wondering if people with more familiarity to the program have information). Apparently Aries doesn't let his athletes take AP courses (I was told he said this at a coaches clinic a number of years ago). Is this true? If so, I think it's reprehensible. Running is great and important, but an athlete shouldn't have to choose between being on their team and challenging themselves academically because of the policies of a coach.

The FM teams also went off campus for running (which Nike prohibits), and apparently have done this in years past, presumably at the direction of Aries. Not that other teams might not do things like this, but actions like that give off an air of "We're so good we can ignore the rules Nike (who's paying for all of this) sets out".

Obviously FM is a tremendous team, and their athletes past and present have done incredible things, but if the success of the program is driven at least in part by a HS coach with policies that detract from academic performance, in the end is it worth it?

You sound like a dumb parent. What the hell are you talking about/ how would that even matter. Parents these days...

This is complete BS. Rather, it is the complete opposite. AP classes aren't only 'approved' (as if Bill would ever attempt to have a say in this process, he deems academics at a HIGHER level of importance than athletics)...they are the NORM for the FM student/athletes.

This is completely misguided, and ridiculous. Laughable.

Question for those who know. Is Stotan racing part of FMs program/ trained by Bill Aris?

Bill is an advisor for Stotan Racing, yes. His son, John (who as Bill's assistant at FM since the early years of NXN), coaches the Stotan program. NIKE supports the FM program, via the FM School District. NIKE supports Stotan Racing, as a separate entity.

Big Things, Big People wrote:

This is complete BS. Rather, it is the complete opposite. AP classes aren't only 'approved' (as if Bill would ever attempt to have a say in this process, he deems academics at a HIGHER level of importance than athletics)...they are the NORM for the FM student/athletes.

This is completely misguided, and ridiculous. Laughable.

Thanks for the response, I'm glad to hear what I heard isn't the case. No, I'm not an overly concerned parent, just a former hs and collegiate athlete who thinks a hs xc program should put the development of a whole person ahead of creating a culture of success at all costs.

Your assesment is right. Bill Aris promotes development in all ways, for the high school team. Ahead of running. So does his son, with the adult team,

http://redmulesrunning.com/being-an-adult-athlete-my-interview-with-john-aris-from-stotan-racing

Sometimes... no scratch that... all the time, when things are too good to be true they simply aren't true. I've looked at the demographics of FM and there is absolutely no way possible a middle-large size school, affluent or not, can win a "national" championship 8 out of 9 times because they "work hard" and have Yoda as their coach. There is something in their "formula" that gives them an advantage over 51 other states that can't be overcome, and many folks that follow the sport as I do know what the "formula" is. The issue, though, really isn't that "formula"... it's that Nike continues to support this travesty by keeping the format the same year after year. It stunts the overall growth of distance running in the US and is only self serving for narrow minded parents who don't see the big picture.

But wait, I think they can. Wait, did they? Yes, they just did! Master Yoda just led his Jedi women to their 8th NATIONAL championship! And the Jedi Men to their first! In the same year!! All mid-sized school and all. Such a travesty. All because of disciplined hard work.