Wingate Men’s XC

If I’m not mistaken van Lierop (Director of TF/XC) was at the helm at Mt. Olive (if you don’t know Wingate here’s another one to look up) for a while (a decade) when they were quite competitive for top 10 XC finishes in D2. Domenech (head XC at wingate) ran for van Lierop there. Looks like an opportunity for expanded roster and elevated success was taken 5 years ago and true to form, turned around another program at the distance events.

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Ricardo BARBOSA | Profile | World Athletics

Ricardo BARBOSA, Portugal - 5000 Metres, 3000 Metres, 3000 Metres Short Track, Mile Short Track, 5 Kilometres Road, 3000 Metres Steeplechase, 1500 Metres, Mile

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Their fourth runner at Paul Short is already 28, will be 29 during track season. Was also third in the steeple at Outdoors last year as a 28 y/o

Win(at all costs)gate

Soccer is another sport that brings in sometimes dozens of international athletes, regardless of division. Many international athletes (particularly those from Europe, Australia/NZ, Middle East) that come to the US come from rich families. There are several random D3 and NAIA schools that manage to bring in lots of foreign athletes. While they definitely make the money work for some of them, you cannot convince me that a random D3/NAIA school has enough shadow money to bring in 10+ foreign guys each year. A lot of them are paying their own way. Even on my track team in college, the European kids often had far more money and disposable income than the Americans. While this isn't really the case for Kenyans, many Europeans that come here are simply loaded, and their parents can afford to let their children mess around for 4 years at a random US school. Looking at the Wingate roster, I would suspect those same dynamics are at play for at least some of these runners.

Nothing against internationals...but ostensibly Wingate would have 12 athletic scholarships for Men's Track and Field. How are they paying these guys? I am not buying that these athletes are content on 35% scholarships and paying for their own dorms and food.

I knew a French guy who ran sub 14, was recruited by Wingate but would have to pay for like half the schooling so went to a different school. So seems like some of or most of these guys maybe are paying for school.

Many DII school struggle to fill out all of those scholarships too.

Also some windgate men have been know to brag to other runners about being on a Triathlon or tennis or pick your other sport scholarship while competing for Track and Field championships.

Also Also, The paul short results aren't crazy inspiring. We all know they were good from their championship last year and I've always felt that the top few DII teams could have been right around the top 10 -15 DI schools. So one of the best DII schools beating the number 12 ranked harvard team that was likely sitting or resting part of their roster is not that surprising. Pairing that with a slightly short course that can produce fast times and this result is perfectly in line with what we would expect them to do.

Go Orediggers!

Also the top 7 Harvard guys finished within 14 seconds of each other. So it is very possible that they were told to run/ work together for the first ~4 - 4.5 miles before picking it up at the finish.

Looking through that roster they have an impressive spread: England, France, Scotland, Chile, Morocco. My team had a few international students, and personally I think that would a pretty cool training environment/experience.

Agreed. I finally looked at that roster and think I'd have loved to have been with guys who are from so many other countries. Hearkening back to the business of "dogwater" schools and their difficulty recruiting US kids it's worth noting that many, many, universities do not attract as many applicants as they'd like. At places like that, where athletic departments bring in less revenue than they put out the departments still contribute to the overall profitability of the school by attracting applicants who would not otherwise have considered attending there.

It's funny when people say american kids won't settle for a dogwater school, but then get mad because the school doesn't settle for the dogwater american runners. It's as if they expect them to just not recruit good athletes because they don't feel the school deserves them.

They have world class triathletes competing in the college games. So swimming and running both get a push. And they have a famous European coach

They turned away 500 applicants.

Seems to be a hint of elitism in this thread. Not everyone can or should go to a Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Patriot League etc…. I am not a fan of that as it teaches kids to value the wrong thing. There are plenty of people who are successful after attending a quote unquote “lesser” school. Work hard, get a degree in something with actual demand and usually you will be okay in life. If you can do prestige then by all means go for it. As for Wingate, they have recruited some kids from the Maryland area where I reside.

Agree that many international students pay full tuition to attend US colleges and universities.

And those schools generally love to get international students that will pay full tuition. and all up front.

It could be that Wingate has been able to attract some international student/runners on partial scholarships. Those students then essentially actively and passively advertise and promote Wingate as a great school to attend in their home countries. And then a few students from their country attend Wingate, paying full tuition. And if their cross country team made up of international student athletes does really well and wins, that is additional promotion and advertising in other countries.

The professors I know generally say that international students are relatively better students academically than those from the US. It makes sense that parents and students from other countries generally take school more seriously if they are making the financial and lifestyle commitment to travel to and attend a US school.

It’s amazing how many good runners run….. at all levels

At age 70, I was looking back and saying to myself one night, you know, if I could go back, I’d try and run at Mesa Community College and then I went to the web site and saw two guys at 14:10 and some pretty decent times and my heart sank

I don’t think I coulda run anywhere!

All that work!

There are lots of places you could run today even Mesa CC isn't one of them. Check the results from meets like the BU indoor ones.

Yes you're absolutely correct. Foreign athletes are FAR superior to US athletes. Nobody could EVER do this kind of job with a group of homegrown athletes. It's just impossible. Maybe Jonathon Marcus has actually done this before, in his own mind, but since Mark Whetmore has retired, I simply cannot imagine a world where lowly US athletes will ever win a title in any division, without bringing in some running gods from Europe and/or Africa.

Americans should just give up XC, as you clearly think that there is a superior race out there, which cannot be tamed.

Having attended a D1 school, several years ago, I have two comments here.

1. I was offered a full scholarship, as were most of the British athletes that were in D1 at that time. Some were on partial funding, for various good reasons. Nobody I know of was paying their tuition back then and rightly so, as we were representing/promoting the university at a high level.

2. I studied for a Masters Degree. It was so easy that i was able to work almost full time and still study/train well. I had one 10hr/wk job locally and I had another, which involved 15-20hrs/wk online. The level of academic study at universities in the USA is generally far lower than it is in the UK and i'd suggest that UK High School education is a similar level to an Undergrad Degree in the USA. This means that many international students who are coming in from English speaking countries, could find their studies are very easy by comparison to back home and it helps them perform better, due to having so much time and energy on their hands, compared to if they were on a degree back home.

Wingate look top drawer, highly impressive.