2008 DIII XC

MidEast Observer wrote:

Dickinson crushes Haverford at Centennial Conference. First time Haverford didn't take home the title:

Dickinson 23

Haverford 43

Johns Hopkins 81

Gettysburg 106

Hopkins women cruise on women's side.

Interesting to remember that Hopkins used to be a UAA school. Had they stayed in that conference, it would have made a tough meet even tougher...

Kaul is running just fine, I wouldn't worry about him we all know something happened to him at Notre Dame, but that was just odd. He has ran two exceptionally good races at oshkosh and stevens point since then and was not tested at conference where he ran 24:15. I think he might be the best chance to take down kosgei at nationals.

Kosgei will be pretty damn hard to beat head up, and anyone on a team with a shot to win or make the podium would be stupid to have their top guys risk going with him and getting broken. XC is a team sport, the best thing for Oshkosh would be for Kaul to run for 2nd and get the 1 point in the team score. Same for Calvin, Cortland, NYU, and Stevens point top guys. Kosgei is only losing if he has a problem, injured, sick, something.

how about some predictions of which regions will get 3,4,5 teams into NCAA's

the wiac was an awesome race. I wasn't surprised to see Kaul win in ease, and Towle looked like he had a great race. I was really surpised that Oshkosh beat Lacrosse, a little surpised that lacrosse only put one guy in the top 7 with the other 6 from Oshkosh and Point. is steinmest from oshkosh a true or redshirted freshman? anyone?

atlantic 5

midwest 5

great lakes 5

middle east 5

north east 5

south 2

west 2

central 3

I think that Mull has what it takes to give Kosgei a run for his money. Not saying Mull will beat him, but his 24:47 at Parkside means he is in very, very good shape. He will be top 3 at Nationals.

mike y wrote:

the wiac was an awesome race. I wasn't surprised to see Kaul win in ease, and Towle looked like he had a great race. I was really surpised that Oshkosh beat Lacrosse, a little surpised that lacrosse only put one guy in the top 7 with the other 6 from Oshkosh and Point. is steinmest from oshkosh a true or redshirted freshman? anyone?

Stymiest is a true freshmen. He still hasn't touched his race potential yet throwing down high school kick after high school kick in each race thus far hahah

kibitzer wrote ... Interesting to remember that Hopkins used to be a UAA school. Had they stayed in that conference, it would have made a tough meet even tougher...

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kibitzer ... when was Hopkins in the UAA. The Centennial Conference has them participating in every conference championship since 1993 ... see

http://www.centennial.org/crosscountry/records/men.pdf

With that said, I'd think Hopkins would be a better fit for the UAA, as it doesn't have much in common with the smaller liberal arts colleges like Haverford, Gettysburg and so forth. Seems like they have an advantage due to size and probably the UAA is a better fit.

question for kibitzer wrote:

kibitzer ... when was Hopkins in the UAA. The Centennial Conference has them participating in every conference championship since 1993.

Back around 1990, IIRC. I'm fairly sure that the UAA used to have nine schools. I think Brandeis joined a year or two after the other eight; at the time, that meant six ranked xc teams (UR, Wash, Emory, CMU, CWRU, BU) in a nine-team conference.

The only conference that rivalled it for competitiveness (at the DIII level) was the Wisconsin DIII schools.

Hopkins was in both conferences for a decent amount of time, dropped out of the UAA in 1998-99ish for good, basically was a money issue at the time, figured they could get the same competition for their kids without having to spend for the uaa travel to championships sites. Rochester has done the same in Track now a days, doesnt come due to nature of having to pay for flights/hotels for a travel party of about 50 indoor and outdoor.

wrmyhr wrote:

Hopkins was in both conferences for a decent amount of time, dropped out of the UAA in 1998-99ish for good, basically was a money issue at the time, figured they could get the same competition for their kids without having to spend for the uaa travel to championships sites. Rochester has done the same in Track nowadays, doesnt come due to nature of having to pay for flights/hotels for a travel party of about 50 indoor and outdoor.

Thanks for the info. I hadn't known that about UR.

Given the approaching belt-tightening that universities are going to experience, I wonder whether the UAA conference can survive. Those long air trips are going to get too expensive for other UAA schools, I'm thinking...and not just in track: their basketball teams play home and home each season, I believe. With the rising cost of air travel and universities' shrinking incomes, you have to wonder how long they can keep that up.

Stymiest is a true freshmen from Oconto Falls WI.

it looks like UW-Oshkosh had a lot of the top freshman in the WIAC conference meet(including stymiest who appears to be running very strong). they should be a very tough team in the future

strong. wrote:

it looks like UW-Oshkosh had a lot of the top freshman in the WIAC conference meet(including stymiest who appears to be running very strong). they should be a very tough team in the future

Unless he gets "stymied" in his training

Kosgei ran 24:39 on Hamiltons course. (going out in 5:08 and gradually picking it up) He ran 25:22 there last year. Second place this year(a sure fire AA) was 26:26. The year before Matt Deshane ran 25:32 for the win. Just to show that this course is tough. If Kosgei wants to do it he'll win nationals by 45-60 seconds. I would love to see what he can do if he just hammers at nationals, I would say 23:30 is not out of the question.

anybody forecasting the women on this thread?

Kosgei also won NESCACs by 35 seconds, running 25:07 pretty much by himself. Sub 24 may be saying a bit too much, but he should win regardless.

Kosgei will not run 23:30 on a course where arguably one of the greatest, if not greatest, DIII xc runners ever ran 24:30. He won't win by 40-60 seconds, not because he won't want to, because he can't. Reminds of how everyone was talking about how Yuot was going to kill people the year after Moen graduated, then he didn't even win.

Hopkins actually last competed in the UAA in 1996. This was after they ended a 4 year DFL streak on the men's side. This was back in the days when UAA's were a full month before Nationals.

Also, strangely, in 1997 Case Western didn't make it to Franklin Park for the meet, so they went from 9 teams to 7.