Old hobby jogger wrote:
I ran college track three decades ago. Our team was mediocre on a good day. Qualifying for nationals wasn't even a consideration for us.
The conference meet was our Super Bowl. We aimed all our training around peaking for conference, and we judged our whole season by how we did in that meet.
If we'd been good enough to aim for nationals, we might have viewed conference as just another meet. We weren't, so conference was everything to us.
yea now it's meaningless. Coaches with top end talented kids wont even race them in their key events because ncaa means something. 1500 studs running the 800 or 5k studs racing the 1500/800 etc. Only a handful of teams care enough about it - but those are stacked teams that can blanket the competition. I think they shoulf just scrap the dumb meet and to a mid season meet like they due in NBA and treat the last weekend as a last chance rabbeted meet like they do mid season. silly to get everyone reved up for Bryan Clay when we could be doing this for end of season. would be way more fun,.