How in tf did Verona not get it done and qualify? 3rd at Midwest in a loaded field over some really solid teams. Won their conference meet last week. They qualify 3 individuals but not the team. Crazy loaded sectional which makes no sense when you look at neighboring sectionals and who qualified. WIAA did them no favors but are they the best team to not qualify in the last 10 years while having all their top guys running?
Madison West always finds a way to get it done. They’re too tough to beat for a state berth
The argument that Tanner had a better post-season than Lenn is strong.
I think this thread needs to end.
Ultimately, it's about high school competition and its competitors and with the last pages of drunkard accusations and inside baseball WIAA hijinx, what's happening is we all look like a bunch of gossipers at a sewing circle who ourselves are more fit for a high school lunch table.
I don't know what the right venue is, but I do know if there are legitimate grievances, it isn't here. There are points of contact at the WIAA (or the AD at your respective school) to connect with. If you feel like the sport isn't being built how it should or could be in our state, you can try to do something about it without stooping to character assassination.
If you think a course is too short, what's the actual issue? There aren't extra qualifiers for teams, and individual extra qualification is about place, not time, within one sectional -- the effects of a short course (or a long course, or 5000 meters of hills, or a 5000 meter grass track) are quarantined to that one sectional.
If you are a coach of a team at that sectional and worry a team who knows it's 200m short will have a pacing advantage, well, you can grab a wheel and walk the course to confirm it and adjust accordingly. What are your instructions for different courses? Do you have them? Are you able to adjust for a course like Parkside and a flat, grass track? At the end of the day, course variability is an advantage for coaches who can shape the racing models of their runners to fit a course.
I don't know the coach in question being accused of being a drunk. I only care to the point that an actively intoxicated person shouldn't be actively coaching, but that doesn't seem to be what's being said, and if it is, you should contact your AD or the WIAA and go from there, if you actually think there's a coach showing up to practices hammered.
Frustrations about course length? Bring it up at WISTCA. Talk to someone. If it matters to you, educate others on why it should matter to them. Do you want "certified" courses? Do you want to change the state qualification process, so historically strong sectionals can get more than two teams through? A previous user noted how there are some "landlocked" sectionals. Another lamented that the lack of regionals means a WIAA Cross Country Sectional is more of an obligation for most teams rather than the intensely fought for affair it is for volleyball or basketball. Are these a symptom of the course to course variability inherent to the sport? Can we, smartly, try to mitigate these things? Football has its coaches voting for seeding, why can't Cross Country have its own version, ranking sectionals -- the top two get to qualify three teams? If we want hard quantification of team quality, we need ELO for certified courses, we need an attempt to take into account length and difficulty. These are big issues that require concerted efforts. If you can raise a groundswell of support from coaches, you're going to get ADs talking to the WIAA, you're going to get your coaching association reps talking to the WIAA. If the WIAA gets clear signals and solutions for change and doesn't do anything about it, then you start with petitions. Bend the ear of a reporter. Do something, anything.
Anything except what's been happening here. We have high school athlete's names being said in close proximity to either axes to grind or, worse yet, something very sad. Either way, it shouldn't be happening.
If you feel like the sport isn't being built how it should or could be in our state, you can try to do something about it without stooping to character assassination.
This is exactly what the coaches in question have done to countless other people.
There are rumoring, non educator alcoholics that leech onto the sport and because there are shortages across extracurricular / supplemental education these people are punched through into the mix without the proper requisites. The barriers to entry are too low in coaching and then the grandiosity of certain people without much else going on in their lives intensifies with their unearned titles in the associations.
The solution is to require that coaches be educators first so that these situations don't reoccur. So that courses are measured with certainty and off the track behavior remains accountable.
Compare it to the Brown shooting where the person of interest has scientifically been eliminated from any wrong doing. Yet the guy has to live with repercussions of everyone else erroneously jumping to conclusions in the moment. Not fair that his name was tarnished because of what people erroneously thought.
If you feel like the sport isn't being built how it should or could be in our state, you can try to do something about it without stooping to character assassination.
This is exactly what the coaches in question have done to countless other people.
There are rumoring, non educator alcoholics that leech onto the sport and because there are shortages across extracurricular / supplemental education these people are punched through into the mix without the proper requisites. The barriers to entry are too low in coaching and then the grandiosity of certain people without much else going on in their lives intensifies with their unearned titles in the associations.
The solution is to require that coaches be educators first so that these situations don't reoccur. So that courses are measured with certainty and off the track behavior remains accountable.
Compare it to the Brown shooting where the person of interest has scientifically been eliminated from any wrong doing. Yet the guy has to live with repercussions of everyone else erroneously jumping to conclusions in the moment. Not fair that his name was tarnished because of what people erroneously thought.
I need to start with what harm do you think is actually being done by a course being shorter. I do not see the issue here, as it's the same distance for everyone and there's ample time to wheel the course before it starts. 4.8k versus 5.1k seems silly, but we already accept a wide degree of difference in course difficulty in terms of grade, turns, surface (hard versus soft, wood chips versus grass versus dirt, the list goes on) and while 4.8k versus 5.1k is a lot, it's just another variable on top of lots of other variables. The wider the course variability, the better it is for coaches who know how to adjust. Do you want more uniform courses so it's less about the coach and more about the athlete? That's a perfectly reasonable consideration. I'm trying to understand the opposition to one dial of a course being turned (to a lower distance) when there are already fifty other dials and the results from one course do not reach further than that course.
Your points about educator first are not without merit but how often are schools pressured to win? Let me ask it a different way, how many programs do not have to worry about results? You talk about educator first for coaching so I am going to assume you are athlete first for priority. If a program is for the athletes and their well being and at this level we should assume that's the goal, right? Rung climbing for a coach via a high school team is not a stated mission of high school athletics and should not be rewarded or tolerated. I am with you there. What happens if there's an incredible person who everyone loves as a coach, but has athletes do the worst workouts because that part of their coaching is terrible? Does a replacement have to be 99% as good of a person but 50% better with workouts? What's the trade-off that needs to be accepted?
Easiest answer is allow athletes to go outside their team for training, but I'm not sure you would agree. I'm beginning to come around to your opinion of school coaches having to be educators first but how many educator coaches can you think of that currently think they know everything, get uninspiring results and would not be okay with an athlete getting outside workouts? I've been present for WISTCA clinics where hundreds listened to a presenter talk about how to get an athlete's vo2max yet the number of coaches who actually track that is a rounding error above zero, and I personally know 20 coaches who think if they were at Marquette or Middleton that they would win 10 state titles in a row with the demographic advantages yet none of them actually walk the walk with how they talk about coaching. I don't think it's reasonable to expect high school coaches be able to provide world class training but I also think way too many coaches in the state are unreasonable in the value they think they provide in training, and your plan of educator first is probably going to help.
If those coaches have done those things, then you do what we would all tell our athletes to do and that is turn the other cheek. Do not use their poor behavior to excuse similar behavior. You're talking about accountability but allowing the alleged actions of others to shape your own actions to a standard you know is beneath you and that of what we would want from an educator.
I would support you if you started a movement for all coaches for schools having to be educators if you also allowed parents to send their kids to private options for training in season without repercussions
Former Wisconsin high schoolers: Elijah Pabon, Manny Putz, Ryan Severson - set to run unattached in the Nuttycombe "B" race Owen Bosley, Cael Grotenhuis - set to run in Nuttycombe Spencer Alf - set to run in PreNats Ethan Olds - 25:23 at Gans Creek Joseph McKee, Joshua McKee - 23:25 and 24:01 at Paul Short Run (the McKee twins graduated in 2020.... yet they are only sophomores right now... wtf)
Wisconsin has zero in-state talent who are running in the Nuttycombe main race, and you know they're probably going to play possum with their top runners. Show some spine, Mick.
Cooper Gunderson (Stevens Point, part of the NXN 2023 squad). Now runs for St Olaf. 11th at MIAC XC 2025
Here are the list of teams "on the bubble" for a state qualifying spot, as per use of Athletic.net's Hypothetical Meet feature for each D1 Boys sectional.
Sectional 1: Menomonie vs. Hudson vs. Eau Claire Memorial Sectional 2: DC Everest vs. Neenah Sectional 3: Kimberly vs. De Pere vs. Green Bay Preble Sectional 4: DeForest vs. Verona vs. Middleton vs. Madison West Sectional 5: West Bend West vs. Hartford Union vs. Oshkosh West vs. Slinger Sectional 6: N/A Sectional 7: N/A Sectional 8: N/A Sectional 9: N/A Sectional 10: Oak Creek vs. Muskego vs. Kenosha Tremper
Sectional 2, can probably add Hortonville and Marshfield to the mix.
Whoops, meant to say that I would disagree with this. Fat fingered the reply button. Who is with me guys??? #gorockets #wehavegrantdean #howdoyouspelltorontoDRAKE #firsttimeimnervous
How in tf did Verona not get it done and qualify? 3rd at Midwest in a loaded field over some really solid teams. Won their conference meet last week. They qualify 3 individuals but not the team. Crazy loaded sectional which makes no sense when you look at neighboring sectionals and who qualified. WIAA did them no favors but are they the best team to not qualify in the last 10 years while having all their top guys running?
Deforest was stacked, and West always reloads and knows how to get it done when it counts.
Verona’s long time coach Randy Marks retired. I wonder if that played a role in it at all. If so, this makes me wonder what the future of the program will be like.
It’s great that in 2024 they made state (and won the section) for the first time in forever.
