Pete Watson to Boston College T&F/XC? Are they FINALLY putting real money into their distance running program?

Idk the dynamics of climbing the coaching ladder, but perhaps there is value in getting experience in the director role. BC is never going to be good, but maybe he can leverage this into a director position at a competitive school down the road. The money and job security of zero expectations also don’t hurt.

Okay Pete, you almost convinced me, but if it’s that simple… why are the BC men worst than some of the local high school teams?

Scholarships/coaching.

People are so dumb.

Coaching doesn’t matter if you can’t recruit top runners. If a HS prospect has scholarship offers from Stanford, Oregon, NAU or Colorado, is he going to choose BC instead? It will be the same challenge for Brosnan at UCLA.

Coaching 100% matters, not sure if you understand this sport. I had zero funding DII recruited 10:30 3200m guys; qualified to nationals in XC four years in a row and developed some low 14-min guys which then led my to my current D1 opportunity because my system and philosophy works.

Coaching is 50% of the equation.

10:30 to low 14s doesn’t happen and it’s rare for even a 9:20 guy to later run that fast for 5K.

Some posters believe the reason certain schools have never had good distance running programs is because of poor coaching, but the reason might be that the good ones don’t want to go there because they doubt they will have much success in recruiting.

Which schools? What are the names of these guys? You should want to get teh credit. But it isn't real so you can't

I believe the last class that had men's track scholarships was the class of 2001. Prior to that, it was not fully funded -- about half.

Will Kerr stay on ?

I went on a recruiting visit there in the mid 90’s when they still had scholarships for the men with Randy Thomas. The football team was hosting Michigan and that was literally all anybody talked about. The guys on the team seemed more interested in partying and the game than the specifics of the team, training, racing etc.. It’s a great academic institution and lots of good parties in the Mods, but that culture ultimately killed the mens program. They had a long history of getting good high school runners who decided they wanted to party instead of run, so men lost their funding. Tough to recruit in current environment.

Yep. Another former UVA guy here, I was there for the end of his time in Cville - I saw him at his worst it seems. Pretty much the whole team was either burnt out or injured under him. Not fun. Can confirm that the way we all found out he left for Texas was via Flotrack and Letsrun first... then a few hours later we all got a text from him. Definitely left a bad taste

Also can confirm that the boys at Texas found out via the Stride Report, and had no idea he was planning to leave. Don’t think they’re losing sleep over it though, they’re happy moving on.

Harvard blew BC out in a m/w dual. Watson gets a view of squad.

bceagles.com

Boston College vs. Harvard - Run the Res (PDF)

Boston College vs. Harvard - Run the Res (PDF)

Link:bceagles.com/documents/2022/9/2/Harvar...

Cmon chestnut hill reservoir? It looks like a public walking path tempo run workout where they didn’t even close the path to dogs

Not a blow out on the Men's side at all.. good starting point.

It was just a meet with JV guys just so the team could move in early. I don't know why all the times were exactly the same. Did they do it as a workout together?

Regardless, Harvard was 12th in the country last year with almost everyone returning and BC was 28th out of 35 in the Northeast Region. Harvard's D team would beat BC's A team.

What's up with those women's results? Quite the photo finish for places 2-10...

This. Why are all of the times identical for the most part?

It’s at a reservoir trail open to dogs and the public I think