HEPS cross-country, 2010

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this but the big development of the early season has happened away from the course on the men's side. NCAA qualifier Rob Speare is no longer a Princeton Tiger.

Speare was a junior last year but isn't back. Both Princeton and Columbia were supposed to return everyone from last year but the Princeton website said prior to the first meet, "The squad lost just one scorer from last year, Rob Speare who competed at the NCAA Championships."

He is also not on their website. Does anyone know what happened to Speare?

Also did anyone notice how Rojo sucked up to his alma mater on the Cornell site by saying, "Princeton in my mind is a top-15 team nationally on paper."

I guess he's just being honest but has anyone ever seen a coach prasie another team in their own team preview?

Should a team of Cabral, Leung, Speare, Soloff, Van Ackeren, and Amirault be top 15?

That's 5 NCAA individual qualifiers plus a 4:01/14:04 guy as the 6th - now 5th - man.

Yes, that's a top-15 team on paper. Just like Indiana was top-10 on paper last year. But paper is paper. In my opinion, you are likely to get your wish.

looks like speare was a senior in terms of xc eligibility last year?

http://www.goprincetontigers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=10600&ATCLID=204798250

either way princeton gets top recruiting classes year in and year out, hopefully they can finally put something together for regionals/nationals and bring up the league's rep

well.... wrote:

looks like speare was a senior in terms of xc eligibility last year?

http://www.goprincetontigers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=10600&ATCLID=204798250

'

Nice try buddy. He was a senior in HS in 2007 - meaning he'd be a junior this year.

He also was listed as a sophomore at the 2008 Heps xc meet and a junior last year.

He clearly must just not be in school. He certainly isn't out of xc eligibility.

3 possibilities. 1) Failed out 2) Graduated early (unlikely as why wouldn't he be on another team's roster as he is an ncaa qualifier) 3) Studying abroad or leave for some sort of medical issue.

Princeton people let us know.

Word has it he is on secret training with some black ops Delta team.

maybe he just got sick of racing. maybe he wanted to spend more time at eating clubs and less at practice.

also

for cornell's opening meet all competing members of the cross country team raced. the roster has some girls from mid-D who don't actually run cross.

any word about Speare? How about Escareno, Chenoweth, other top guys who haven't been seen yet? Cornell and Princeton have some serious depth and are looking really impressive so far.

Harvard is planning on running their top people this Friday at the H/Y. The MoC race was more for the frosh and not top-7 people.

bron-Y-aur wrote:

also

for cornell's opening meet all competing members of the cross country team raced. the roster has some girls from mid-D who don't actually run cross.

From reading this thread, I see that Cornell's first meet was at Army. They definitely had some top women missing from that race--women who ran against Syracuse the next week.

I'm not surprised that they've got more people on the roster than they have race, though. Lots of schools do this. The mid-D types might run home meets or something, but not travel.

Not likely Speare failed out. He was an academic All-American last year. He also was listed in the preseason as team captain. He was injured towards the end of the outdoor season. My guess is he never recovered.

I'm not surprised that this thread is largely devoid of "smack talk," but I had expected a little more results-and-analysis.

Well, the students are probably busy studying and the alums busy making bank. Good for you, Ivy League.

rumor has it he's taking a year off. Results from harvard yale??

I heard he ran a 10k last spring at Stanford in Victories and tore both his plantars! Yikes!

men -

Princeton

Cornell

Columbia

Dartmouth

Harvard

Yale

Brown

Penn

women -

Prnceton

Harvard

Cornell

Brown

Columbia

Dartmouth

Penn

Yale

onyourmarkmywords wrote:

men -

Princeton

Cornell

Columbia

Dartmouth

Harvard

Yale

Brown

Penn

women -

Princeton

Harvard

Cornell

Brown

Columbia

Dartmouth

Penn

Yale

Didn't the Yale guys just beat Harvard and narrowly lose to a full-strength Dartmouth without two of their top three guys? And Cornell over the defending champs?

Put Columbia 2 (Princeton is going to be really hard to handle) and Yale 4 and you've got it about right.

Cornell is definitely beating Harvard.

All the times from Cornell's last race were really slow because the Colgate course is full of sharp turns and slippery hills. Let's see what happens this friday at Paul Short.

speare wrote:

Results from harvard yale??

"The Yale men and the Princeton women came through on the Yale Golf Course in New Haven, Conn., on Friday. The Bulldog men took back the Main Memorial Trophy, defeating rival Harvard by 10 points while the Tiger women dominated the HYP meet with seven runners finishing in the top 12.

While 2009 Heps Champion Dan Chenoweth of Harvard set a meet record by finishing in 25:10.70, Yale senior Jeff Perrella overcame two Crimson runners late in the race to take second and pace the Bulldogs to the title.

In the women’s 5k championship, Princeton senior Sarah Cummings held off Harvard senior Claire Richardson by six seconds to finish first. Cummings’ time of 17:14.20 broke a 23-year-old meet record. Coach Peter Farrell’s Tigers are ranked among the nation’s top 10 teams."

Result links at:

Who is the new men's distance coach at Brown?

Paul Short results:

http://www.paulshortxcrun.com/PaulShort/PSLayer.php

I wasn't there, so I know nothing about how the weather and course conditions may have varied among the different races. Most of the Ivies ran together in the "Gold" races; Princeton (M&W) was separate, running in the "Brown" races with what appear to have been second-line runners. (But I'm not very familiar with Princeton's squads--anyone able to amplify?)

On the women's side, Cornell edged Columbia, but the latter actually ran (on average) faster. These two were solidly ahead of Brown, which has three frosh in its top four; and Brown was clear of Penn and Dartmouth, which are about as closely matched as the first two. In a less-populated race (one that rewards a top placer less), Dartmouth might be a slim favorite over Penn.

Cornell's McMahon, the Red's first finisher and the third freshman in the race (behind two of Georgetown's), continues to impress. Looks like the Big Red are making a little progress in bridging the gap between their front group and the rest of the top seven.

http://www.paulshortxcrun.com/PaulShort/Results/2010_CW_Gold.html

For the men, an excellent showing for Dartmouth, which had six men in before Cornell's third (but after Columbia's seventh!). Not a single senior among Dartmouth's seven. Columbia looks as though it once again used pack running successfully; Cornell's two seniors clearly gapped their teammates, but the rest of the Red's group were frosh and sophs, with the potential to close up as the season moves on.

http://www.paulshortxcrun.com/PaulShort/Results/2010_CM_Gold.html

So based on this meet--and assuming Princeton as #1s--for the men's Heps teams we're looking at

PU

Dartmouth

Columbia

Cornell

Penn

Brown

with Yale and Harvard who-knows-where.

And for the women, it's looking like

PU

Cornell/Columbia

Brown

Penn/Dartmouth

with Y and H again question marks. (How definitive were the HYP results, by the way? Were any of the better runners missing?)

Any observations/thoughts about Paul Short, or about how Yale and Harvard might fit into the groups above, or how things might change in the next four weeks? I guess I'm wondering particularly about people who might compete at Heps but haven't in PS and other recent meets...