DIII Cross Country 2009

As far as SUNY goes:

Undergrads

Buff State: 9361

Oswego : 7971

Brockport: 6970

New Paltz: 6707

Cortland: 6199

Plattsburgh: 5736

Oneonta: 5578

Geneseo: 5451

Fredonia: 5178

Potsdam: 3652

Too lazy to look up the Wisco schools, but funny that only one (Oswego might as well be also, so two) SUNY schools fall into your 8000-10000 range. Also with the exception of Potsdam it seems all the relevant programs are at the bottom of that list.

Complaints about size of school are lame.

When schools as different as Calvin, Williams, LaCrosse, Cortland, and NYU can win it all and be competitive year after year, there's really no reason people should be coming on here and whining about who has bigger advantages.

There's no secrets. Get a group of runners together. Train your ass off. Make a name for yourself. Get more and more talented runners interested. Train your ass off. Repeat.

Every school has some advantage that becomes the coach's responsibility to promote. Whether this be strength of academic programs, facilities, local running trails, tuition, academic scholarships to lower tuition (e.g. at a private school)...whatever.

You talk about falling from the sky...and true a state school, due to local name recognition and tuition will attract SOME students that the coach may not have to initially pursue, but you think the same doesn't happen with MIT, NYU, Williams, or Middlebury due to their prestige?!?

And if size of the school was what dictated the division, then why isn't Notre Dame D2? Could be wrong, but I believe their enrollment is around 10k

A quick google search shows that NCC, the most notable DIII powerhouse, has an enrollment of 2480. Not tiny, but definitely on the smaller side. Calvin, the best program of the last 10 years, comes in at 3,874. Also not a huge school. I would argue that size has only a small influence on XC success.

I think TCU's enrollment is right around 3,500 and their football team is doing rather well in D1. I agree, size has a small influence on xc.

Honestly, for the WIAC schools (in Wisconsin), I think it's a matter of cost that makes their enrollment so large. They are $10-15,000/yr cheaper than the private schools around the Midwest.

You can't say that UW-La Crosse & UW-Oshkosh having 10,000+ enrollments is not a factor in their dominance in ALL athletics. They have 8,000 more in their talent pool of people to pick and choose from than most other DIII schools in the nation!!!

And, with the low(er) cost to attend there, obviously going to DI or DII and providing scholarships is not an option, but I would say this presents itself as an argument for D4 to emerge. Maybe if you're talking just cross country, it's not THAT big of an issue (still pretty big, though), but in the grand scheme of things, among all sports, the WIAC is just too dominant to be DIII.

we compete just fine with the WIAC. thanks

The difference in DIII schools has very little to do with size, it is about academics, money, and recruiting. Kids dont fall out of the sky especially in todays day and age of multiple means of communication. Its about some schools get very little admissions help, and some dont need it cause a HS diploma just about gets you in, its about cost, 8-10k a year vs. 50k+ a year at some places and the amount of Financial Aid the school gives. Lastly its about recruiting, and how much the school values athletics, and how much they stretch the rules. Places that give "leadership" grants, which seem to fall to alot of athletes, or a place like Williams who has an astonishing high percentage of Students on an Intercollegiate team, their admissions people value athletics. Calvin has a great team and kids who work very hard, but their school also gives "religious" based scholarships. There are way to many differences between the now 400+ schools in DIII.

My school only has 1,500 people and that definately affects the people who come here. Nobody wants to go to a small school when we're next to one with 16,000 people or there is another school with 16,000 people 2 hours down the high way. They have no interest in still running at a small school even if they were good in highschool if they can go to a big school and be around a lot of people. I'm very involved in our recruiting and that's what a lot of kids tell me that they won't tell coach.

Heymann ran 24:17 today at Saratoga in NY. That's not a fast course, the footing is good the whole way but there are 2 decent hills that you climb twice each. Peter Kosgei's best time on that course is 25:04, last year (probably not an all out effort, but that's 47 seconds difference).

I think that Heymann is the clear favorite for 2nd at nationals. He might even push Kosgei a bit, though I don't think he has a chance to beat him.

Big Will wrote:

Heymann ran 24:17 today at Saratoga in NY. That's not a fast course, the footing is good the whole way but there are 2 decent hills that you climb twice each. Peter Kosgei's best time on that course is 25:04, last year (probably not an all out effort, but that's 47 seconds difference).

I think that Heymann is the clear favorite for 2nd at nationals. He might even push Kosgei a bit, though I don't think he has a chance to beat him.

Too bad Heymann only ran like 25:30 narrowly beating two keene gies, the 24:17 was a miss print they messed up all the times.

I hope you're right that it was a misprint. There is absolutely no reason at all for him to go out and race that hard in a meaningless invite a week before SUNYACs (where he faces some pretty good guys) and with the toughest individual region meet coming up as well. Oh yeah, and NATIONALS! You only get so many all-out efforts in a season, so I hope he's not wasting them on Saratoga Invites considering what he has coming up in the next few weeks.

Big Will wrote:

Heymann ran 24:17 today at Saratoga in NY. That's not a fast course...

Oh boy, are you wrong there. Saratoga is lightning under any weather conditions 5k or 8k. When Saratoga runs 'slow' it still runs about 10 seconds faster than a 'true 8k' and that would mean severe winds and the start/finish field and the horseshoe loop would have to be a complete swamp.

Saratoga on a normal day yields 25-35 second PR's on a regular basis to people running there for the first time.

Why don't UW Superior, River Falls, and Stout dominate the running scene? Every school, big or small, engineering empahsis or business emphasis, cold climate or warm, whatever...will attract and turn off some students. It's the coach's responsibility to find the students/families who would be qualified for/interested in what their school has to offer and then promote it to them.

Even in D1, you don't think Oregon has some pretty obvious advantages over Iona? So then how the hell has Iona done so well lately? Should we create an 'Oregon division' in D1?

Have you ever been to Superior, River Falls, or Stout. Even huge student bodies and low tuitions can't make up for four years of hell in those dumps. Might as well go to a community college.

The course was in miserable condition. Foot deep puddles throughout the woods loops. Everything was soaked, certainly NOT a fast course yesterday.

not heymann, but just as sexy wrote:

The course was in miserable condition. Foot deep puddles throughout the woods loops. Everything was soaked, certainly NOT a fast course yesterday.

Saratoga is never not fast.

Paul Short times vs Saratoga times

Plattsburgh

Heymann 24:12 -> 25:17 (+65, ran to win I would suppose)

Sico 25:26 -> 26:36 (+10)

Yernye 25:39 -> 27:35 (+116, obvious bad race)

Grim 25:40 -> 25:59 (+19)

Mitchell 26:27 -> 26:20 (-7)

Taylor 26:28 -> 27:35 (+67, obvious bad race)

Biondi 26:43 -> 26:45 (+2)

Oneonta

Pampena 26:07 -> 25:56 (-11)

Greenberg 26:30 -> 26:23 (-7)

Madison 26:39 -> 26:26 (-13)

Laroe 26:56 -> 27:08 (+12)

Hollister 27:26 -> 26:28 (+2)

Harvey 27:30 -> 27:38 (+8)

Reynolds 27:32 -> 28:00 (+28, bad race?)

Take out the outliers (over a minute difference) that are Heymann, Yernye and Taylor and average the differences and Saratoga ran about 4 seconds slower than Paul Short.

Obviously more data would be nice (just used the top 7 from Paul Short), but Paul Short is a notoriously very fast course and many athletes run their fastest times there.

Take into account progression and improvement over the time between the meets (mostly shown by the OState boys) Saratoga probably ran closer to 15-20 seconds slower than Paul Short which would still be faster than the average 8 kilometer course.

Add 20 seconds to the OState guys' Saratoga times and they still ran slower across the board at the Cortland meet (pancake flat 8k across athletics fields).

Looks like Sico was 1:10 slower not :10 slower.