If Guelph were in the NCAA, where would they be ranked?

"Also how some of the Guelph guys run for NB in the summer...that would probably violate the amateurism rule"

There are plenty of points to debate about how Guelph would fare in the NCAA, but this type of objection is silly. If the Guelph runners were competing in the NCAA, where wearing NB singlets in the summer isn't allowed, then they wouldn't have done it! The point of fantasy debates like this isn't to get too bogged down in irrelevant details.

Both Genest and Brett are in their fourth year of XC eligibility, and in their fifth year since their five-year NCAA clock started running when they started post-secondary education. Both would be currently eligible if Guelph was an NCAA school. (Aside from wearing the wrong singlets in summer, etc.)

Boorsma gets an asterisk since he's in his fifth year.

This situation is completely different from some of the other "all-time great" CIS teams. UBC in 1993 might well have been a top-10 or 20 team led by Graeme Fell (3x Olympian, 8:12st), Jeff Schiebler (went on to run 27:35) and Zeba Crook (8:28st). But Fell was 34 and Crook was 26 or 27 -- a totally different ballgame. Many of the other great CIS teams have had one or two late-20s ringers too. In comparison, I think the Guelph team comes pretty close to an apples-to-apples comparison with NCAA teams.

The best shot at a CIS team placing high in the NCAA was University of Ottawa's team in 1988. The team was as follows:

Jon Halvorsen...8th at WXC and consistently running very low 28' 10ks all season long

Alain Boucher 8:36 steeple

Bob Rice 8:32 steeple and 9th at WJXC

Richard Charette running low 3:40s and was an animal at XC...won the Canadian nations a few times

Hoken Halvorsen...Jon's older brother and a 5:3? 2k steepler...solid 5th man

I still fail to see how this team would even get ranked. They beat no one at Paul Short that would move them up...and they beat a split squad Portland team at Dellinger which all the coaches would know before voting. Based on that win/loss record versus all the ranked teams they faced, they are not a top 30.

If they were an American team trying to make it to NCAAs, I'm sure they'd pay more attention to that sort of thing.

Eastern Michigan has been division 1 for nearly 40 years. EMU has produced multiple national champions in track and made NCAA's in Cross Country many times including a podium finish in the last 10 years.

asdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdf wrote:

one other point - the DII teams they have lost to (Eastern Michigan) occured when they were not running genest, boorsma, or brett.

slow alumnus wrote:

Top 15? Seems a bit pointless to keep dominating the CIS year after year.

Eligibility issues aside, so the Gryphons' 3-4-5 guys do indeed have slower track PRs than those same guys on an NCAA Top 20 team. That's a definite.

But consider that Proudfoot ran an early-season sub-32 winning race in London, Ontario on a soft, hilly, dog-slow course, and you can see the guy is a great 'cross runner. On the Terre Haute course I'd expect a 31-flat, and that's not too shabby for your Number Four guy.

Based on last year's NCAA results, that should place them between 10 and 15 on the team list.

Right... guelph is playing on a different playing field because of eligibility issues. How about the fact that the can offer a maximum of 3500$ a year in athletic scholarship. That's gotta hurt things a bit.

shaking my head wrote:

Regardless, DST is KING!

I agree. I actually think that Hall should train with DST - one of the best distance coaches in North America.

"Right... guelph is playing on a different playing field because of eligibility issues. How about the fact that the can offer a maximum of 3500$ a year in athletic scholarship. That's gotta hurt things a bit."

They still lost to Dartmouth and they can offer 0$

"Based on last year's NCAA results, that should place them between 10 and 15 on the team list."

They would have had to have wins against teams in the top 10-15 then. They lost to 4 teams that were between 15-25 at the time. Head to head comparison, team finishes and past results are what the rankings are based on; not times on courses or track times.

"Right... guelph is playing on a different playing field because of eligibility issues. How about the fact that the can offer a maximum of 3500$ a year in athletic scholarship. That's gotta hurt things a bit."

The point is they get 5 years to develop...or 6 or 7 or however long you want to stretch out eligibility.

Scholarships of 3500$ CDN per year pays a significant portion of tuition at an Ontario university (probably more than half). Add in Quest for Gold and school is nearly payed for each year. Resources don't seem limiting since Guelph has been at many major meets in North America (Stanford, Dellinger, Paul Short, Notre Dame etc.). As well, offering less scholarship money doesn't seem to influence their ability to recruit...because DST does a pretty damn good job of that!

They weren't allowed to run at Pre-Nats if they were they would have gotten those at large points. Their 5th guy at Paul Short as has been posted on three separate occasions on this thread lost his shoe, this caused him to be over 40 seconds back of his expected finish based upon the results from Dellinger and this past weekend.

"They weren't allowed to run at Pre-Nats if they were they would have gotten those at large points. Their 5th guy at Paul Short as has been posted on three separate occasions on this thread lost his shoe, this caused him to be over 40 seconds back of his expected finish based upon the results from Dellinger and this past weekend."

That's true...missing pre nats is big. But losing a shoe is part of the game, and Boorsma shouldn't score, putting them more like 6th or 7th at that meet. Be objective and realize this team is good, but not that good. A top 10-15 team isn't searching for at-large points, they should qualify auto.

cashmoney wrote:

Best team that doesn't give out athletic scholarships, I bet.

Richmond?

someone else wrote:

cashmoney wrote:

Best team that doesn't give out athletic scholarships, I bet.

Richmond?

no, Princeton and Dartmouth.

NorthAmericanrunner wrote:

I think they are a top 10 team.

In D3 or D2. In D1 they'd be somewhere in the 11th-20th range. Maybe just sneaking into the top 10 on a really good year with some luck.

I think the bottom line is:

Guelph is a borderline national qualifier team that has a similar shot to all the other schools that are borderline and require at large bids. They do it with less resources than a lot of those schools and a smaller pool of athletes to pull from, but that seems to be changing as more and more Canadian kids stay in the CIS.

They would probably be a top-5 D2 school, behind Adams and maybe Western but battling it out for the podium.

They would be the best team in D3.

For the sake of pete, can you elaborate on your insinuation that Proudfoot's training in Sudbury, or any other town in Ontario was a hindrance to his long-term development?

As a Canadian, he obviously was wearing denim.