D3 South Region 2007

Here's the difference in the two Regions:

This year's North Central, who is still nowhere near the North Central's of the past, ran a 5,000m time trial on the track the weekend between conference and Regionals. Their 13th finisher ran 15:17. A 15:17 5K guy in the South Region probably had a good chance to be 13th in the region xc race. So here's a guy who could have potentially finished higher in the entire South Region than he can on his own team, which was only 3rd in the Midwest region.

I think the South Region is getting stronger every year, but there's still a long way to go.

Oh, and Ricky Flynn's race was unbelievable. Most people probably wouldn't even have run at all, let alone qualified for nationals. He's amazing.

In all likelihood you are that 13th guy trying to make yourself feel good. Who else would know those intimate details? While that is quite impressive depth, their 13th would not have been top 13 in the south region. Emory put 6 in front of North Central's 11 at pre-nats and clearly Emory didn't have 6 in the top 13 of the South Region. I don't think anyone would argue that the Midwest is not significantly better than the South Region but some people are definately taking it too far.

I'm not saying he WOULD have finished that high or higher, I'm just saying it potentially could have been possible. Does anyone know how many guys in the South Region have run 15:17 or faster? I'm kind of curious. And no I'm not the 13th guy for North Central. I wish I could run 15:17 right now!

Kartelite. I don't deny that the situation you describe happens, in fact I can recall a soph and junior at the larger (~9,000) school that I went to trying this. Our coach hardly gave them the time of day, and they made it through an 11 mile run, and a repeat 1k workout before quitting. In your situation, and the one I described, none of the athletes made any impact on the team (I'm not trying to be harsh, just honest).

There is probably 1 student that stumbles upon the sport and makes a substantial contribution for every 5,000 athletes that were influenced by time spent on the phone recruiting, quality of facilities and training areas, academic programs, history of the distance program, coaching experience, location, cost, etc.

As bad as Platteville raced at Regionals, they still beat Rhodes by about 180 at the Jim Drews Invite at UW-Lax back in October.

Here's what I know...(could have screwed up a little)

(14:52) 4 403 Alex Mahoney SR Rhodes 26:09 5:16

(14:40) 8 348 Ricky Flynn SO Lynchburg 26:19 5:18

(15:13) 7 307 Vikram Srivastava JR Emory 26:18 5:18

(15:17) 10 308 Paul Winterhalter SO Emory 26:23 5:19

(15:25) 11 357 Frank DeVar SO Mary Washington 26:25 5:19

(15:33) 17 468 James Berry JR Washington & Lee 26:43 5:23

(15:32) 18 262 Brandon Spalding JR Bridgewater (Va.) 26:47 5:24

(15:11) 24 301 Tommy Fyffe SO Emory 27:06 5:28

(15:08) 62 261 Nathan Rittenhouse JR Bridgewater (Va.) 28:08 5:40

Name: wrote:

As bad as Platteville raced at Regionals, they still beat Rhodes by about 180 at the Jim Drews Invite at UW-Lax back in October.

...and last year they beat them by almost 200 at jim drews and then were 100points behind them at nats...same can be said for nebraska wesylan and and wartburg at the same 2 meets

There are a ton of reasons why the south is a poor region and will continue to be for a while.

Many of the midwest and northern schools have beautiful facilities, while lots of south schools don't even have an outdoor track, and very few have access to an indoor track. Look at the championship meets: Rose-Hulman, the Wisconsin schools, Wesleyan and Boston (ECAC's). None of the south schools have anything comparable to these buildings. If you go on a recruiting trip both places, which one would you choose?

The south does have a vast number of D1 programs. While the big name ACC and SEC are drawing out of state, most of the mid-level athletes can get some money from schools like Radford, VMI, and the UNC system, so they follow the "prestige" of a $1,000 scholarship instead of going D3. The problem is even more pronounced on the women's side, where I've seen 2:25 women getting full-rides, when they're 9 seconds away from making D3 provo.

The other regions also have academic advantages. Despite the world-wide success of Africans, the U.S. xc kids are mostly white, middle- or upper-class, and educated. Many will choose a great academic school like Amherst, Johns Hopkins, or Carnegie Mellon over a Division I running program. In the long-term, the best program in the south is Emory, which draws from all over because of their amazing academics. The other top d3's also tend to be good academically (W & L's internationally acclaimed programs, Mary Wash, and I believe Rhodes has high standards) and so they tend to have more out-of-state athletes as well. But the majority of the D3 South Region has mid-level schools, that are only attracting local kids. And as someone mentioned earlier, GA and SC are not hot-beds of high school XC. The good athletes go D1 or they go away.

The Wisco schools have even more of an advantage when you look at the fact that they can offer in-state tuition to the surrounding states.

When you start looking at all these factors, combined with the other things people have mentioned, it really isn't a surprise that the south region has never really stepped up.

I'm not going to make any extreme stipulations....but UT Tyler is a MUCH better team than what they raced on Saturday, you can refute that...but their #5 threw up 3 times during the race and let 20 guys pass in the process...They are returning their #1 through 4 next year

What I've come to find is the comradery among south region athletes, we get bashed on so much, and for good reason you could say...but I really think, and hope, that that could change next year, I know that UT Tyler wants to make the South proud...we'll see.

learning how to spell camaraderie first.

ooo good call.

u cood spind a liftime corekting spellering mestakez....couldn't you?

I'm confused, because obviously if the South could spell perfectly you will still have a problem with their running ability. Maybe you're just meticulous about everything. I'm glad I don't have to see you in person so you could analyze the alignment of my eyebrow hairs.

One thing can be said, perhaps you've made the world a more spell-check friendly place to live, congratulations.

D-o-g. Dog

Yayyyy

If you really are the coach of UT-Tyler or involved with their program you should stop posting either denigrating the performances of your athletes or the performances of the athletes that beat you. What happened last Saturday happened. I'm sure any team could make excuses as to why they could have had a better day. When three teams are within 1 point thats what happens. Just go out and train hard and prove that you're better next year. No one is gonna hand you a regional title for posting about how much better your team is on letsrun. Sorry.

That being said, UT-Tyler probably should have gotten an at large. The fact that they didn't shows a complete lack of respect for the South region and what the teams that qualified last year were able to do. They basically predicted Rhodes and Emory to be last and second to last which will not happen.

coach? wrote:

That being said, UT-Tyler probably should have gotten an at large. The fact that they didn't shows a complete lack of respect for the South region and what the teams that qualified last year were able to do. They basically predicted Rhodes and Emory to be last and second to last which will not happen.

If the south wanted three teams, they needed to do something to justify getting 3 teams in. The fact of the matter is that they didn't. They need to not get destroyed by other teams that barely make it into nationals. This has been brought up before, and the response was that Rhodes just wasn't peaking early, but they got destroyed by Colorado College at their conference meet, and frankly, Colorado College's 4th and 5th guys are pretty bad. Below are the results of the conference meet I'm talking about. In the west region, CC was the third team to go. At west regionals CC guys placed 32 and 43 respectively for the 4th and 5th men. Their 7th, who was in front of Rhodes 5th, was 65th. If you want to go to nationals, you have to do better than they did at their conference meet. By UT-Tyler getting beat by a team like this, they did not deserve to go to regionals.

1 Alex Nichols Colorado College 25:36.05

2 Kiran Moorty Colorado College 25:51.50

3 Julian Boggs Colorado College 25:57.10

6 Nick Lewis Rhodes 26:11.60

7 Alex Mahoney Rhodes 26:14.30

12 Chris Moore Rhodes 26:57.15

14 Matt Sheldon Colorado College 27:13.15

17 Nicholas Campbell Colorado College 27:19.20

19 Daniel Kraft Colorado College 27:23.05

24 Mark Handelman Rhodes 27:36.20

26 Justin Quintana Colorado College 27:39.90

29 Steele French Rhodes 27:48.70

Last sentence should read "did not deserve to go to nationals"

if i understand all the bashing on rhodes et al correctly, i think you meant what you initially wrote.

Rhodes didn't even have the same 5th guy at those two races...If the same guy had been 5th for their team at regions they would not be anywhere near nationals. The fact is they showed up big time and their top 3 ran extremely well, and their 4 and 5 came through in the clutch. And Emory isn't that bad either. Joking! Calm down. But speaking as someone who has seen Tyler race a few times this year, they were definitely good enough to go to nats. I don't think they were so awesome that it's the biggest injustice of the year, but they're pretty good. But when you rely on the same 5 guys the way they did, you're very vulnerable to one of them having a bad day. Think about Rhodes if any of their 5 had hurt himself. Then look at Emory, and it wouldn't have made a difference.

I think the South is still sending a very respectable group to Nats. Best of luck to Rhodes and Emory, and all the individuals that made it. I think Donnan and Cowen will still represent Tyler pretty well. I think last year's results get discounted because of the mud, but a couple decent performances this year might at least get the South up to the level of respectable.

Similarly if you look at the Central and Midwest Regionals, the 5th (and last eligible) qualifying teams there were Wartburg and UW-Platteville respectively. Both teams, who were 5th in their region, beat Rhodes at the UW-LaCrosse meet in mid-October. So the 5th team in two strong regions beat the winner (well joint-winner) of the South and people want the 3rd team from the South to advance? Maybe UT-Tyler could have done decent at NCAA's but they lost to a team like Rhodes who couldn't survive in these other power regions and the committee puts a lot of stock into results like that.