If it was me, I'd run the race and have no interest in the scholarship.
If it was me, I'd run the race and have no interest in the scholarship.
According to Forbes recent rankings of undergraduate schools:
Stanford is 3rd, Pomona is 9th. Williams College is 2nd and is a D3 school. You sir are an idiot. Bet you don't even know what a Rhodes Scholarship is.
I think everyone is missing the main point here, the top returner is Christy Cazzola from UW-OSH, not this PP chick!
This article explains more about Lydens' decision. She sounds very smart.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-1115-elliott-20121115,0,1669183.column
Look, both Unterreiner and Lydens knew that this could be an issue. The Rhodes Scholarship has dates attached to their application and interview process, as does the NCAA cross country championship season. Both athletes knew this could cause an issue and it so happens that Unterreiner goes to a school that has alumni with resources to help him. Unfortunately, Lydens does not. She picked her school for a reason and Unterreiner picked his school for a reason and both are now living with their decisions.
Social scientist wrote:
She goes to Pomona, not Pitzer. The Pomona endowment is 1.7 billion. Pitzer's is the 113million figure. They combine forces for athletics.
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1) bingo. 2)It's about precedent. Pomona does not want to establish that it's willing to dip into the piggy bank for special cases unless it absolutely has to. And they don't. It's just some race. I know it seems like a big deal to us. But it's just something this girl does as a hobby. I think almost any sane person would choose the interview over the race. There will be other races.
4)The Rhodes foundation is the group to be mad at. They don't schedule make-up days for extremely important conflicts? They can't interview by skype?
5)The earlier debate about whether the Rhodes actually helps people or if people who would have gotten it already possessed all the traits necessary to be wildly successful in life- unresolvable. Yes it probably opens doors. No, we can't counterfactual how those people would have done without it. Would Bill Clinton still be president if he hadn't gotten it? What if he hadn't dropped out? We'll never know.
The real problem here is that the Rhodes scholarship, which lists athletics as one of its main criteria, is forcing athletes to choose between the Rhodes interview and perhaps the most important athletic event of their career. It's inexcusable and hypocritical to force an athlete to make that choice.
WGAF? He's not interviewing at UC Berkeley the #1 school on the Shanghai list now.
The thing many of you are missing is that the application process for the Rhodes begins way back in the summer, long before the athlete knows if they or their team will qualify for Nationals and before they know the start time of their race or the timing details of the interview process. If you are a runner yourself you must know that an illness or injury could end your season at any time. So, you go full steam ahead in both arenas. The Rhodes applicants don't even know they got an interview until early November. It's not like you call up the interview committee to ask about details before you even become a finalist. By nature, this type of student-athlete is goal oriented and optimistic. Give 'em both a break.
riley stops wrote:
Look, both Unterreiner and Lydens knew that this could be an issue. The Rhodes Scholarship has dates attached to their application and interview process, as does the NCAA cross country championship season. Both athletes knew this could cause an issue and it so happens that Unterreiner goes to a school that has alumni with resources to help him. Unfortunately, Lydens does not. She picked her school for a reason and Unterreiner picked his school for a reason and both are now living with their decisions.
people are also missing the fact that the link posted one or two pages ago says lydens' race and interview ARE ON THE SAME DAY (saturday). sounds like unterreiner, meanwhile, has a friday interview and a saturday race, so he can do both.
you know letsrun is dead when nobody on the boards can get their head screwed on straight long enough to think about the days of the week.
It is a 2 part interview Friday and Saturday, for both athletes.
I don't feel like reading this whole thread so someone give me sparknotes- is the D3 girl going to nationals or the interview?
She's doing the interview. She qualified as an individual, but her team didn't, so it was strictly an individual choice.
I thought it would be considered an NCAA violation... to offer this service to an athlete if it isn't available to every member of the student body should be a violation. I haven't followed the entire story so maybe I'm missing something.
Once the NCAA national meet and Rhodes announcements are over on Saturday, we can look back, and those who think they are right can post here to say they were right.
Here are the possibilities and their letsrun outcomes for the Stanford and Pomona runners:
Stanford’s runner flies on his private jet, runs well, say top five for the team, and wins the Rhodes……….you see, you CAN do it all, good for him!
Stanford’s runner flies on his private jet, runs poorly, but wins the Rhodes………..oh man, that was just too much to ask of him. How can you race under such pressure? Good for him to win the Rhodes, though.
Stanford’s runner flies on his private jet, runs well, say top five for the team, but doesn’t win the Rhodes………Good try with the Rhodes, but he was there for his team. Good for him, what a team player.
Stanford’s runner flies on his private jet, runs poorly, and doesn’t win the Rhodes……….tough go at it, sir. Why did you try to do both? Good try, though.
Pomona’s jetless, no-nationals runner doesn’t get the Rhodes………See? Why didn’t she just run at the national meet?
Pomona’s jetless, no-nationals runner wins the Rhodes…….See? She made the right choice about not racing Nationals after all.
I wonder what the message boards over at LetsRhodes.com are saying?
Ignorant8 wrote:
1) He went to a school that has alumni who are willing to offer this kind of support. You can get a general sense of alumni support that a program has before you choose it if you really want to, so it's her own fault she didn't pick a school where there are alumni who are willing to put this kind of money into an athlete.
Are you really faulting her for not choosing a college based on the likelihood than alumni would offer her a private jet? First of all, most people choose a college based on education, not just athletic opportunities. Even more importantly, though, I don't think she had any expectations of being this kind of a runner in high school and she certainly couldn't have run for Stanford. She went to high school in Singapore and was a hurdler/800 runner. It would be ridiculous for her to choose a school based on alumni commitment to running, since she couldn't even have run at one of those schools.
comparison wrote:
In fact, Pomona officials would probably argue that it’s a better educational experience to have the student think through the dilemma and decide which event they’d rather do, instead of fostering the notion that you can have, and do, it all.
This.
Stanford is clearly a great school. But it coddles students, with the private plane trip for Miles a particularly obvious example. Such coddling certainly has some benefits, but it can also fail to prepare students for the harsher realities of the real world*.
You could even speculate that such coddling has contributed to a number of Stanford teams cracking under pressure.
* Yes, I know, some percentage of Stanford students are already quite well acquainted with said harsh realities. I'm not saying they have all had easy lives, or are all rich - they haven't and they're not. I'm talking about the typical experience inside the protective Stanford bubble, and it doesn't apply to everyone there.
She also picked a top academic school that helped her qualify as a Rhodes finalist. She chose well, jet or no jet.
Master G wrote:
I thought it would be considered an NCAA violation... to offer this service to an athlete if it isn't available to every member of the student body should be a violation. I haven't followed the entire story so maybe I'm missing something.
This is the most grossly misunderstood rule in the NCAA. Every athlete is provided bags full of gear, transportation to/from every meet, and many receive full tuition paid for: all things that are not available to every member of the student body. How could a team possibly bring their athletes to a meet if they had to offer the transportation to every student at the school?
The "extra benefit" rule applies to outsiders (i.e. not the school). If the alum offered to fly Unterreiner to Disney World to celebrate getting the Rhodes, that would be impermissible. But giving the money to the school so they can provide transportation to the meet for one of their athletes is permissible.
whatever happens, life might work out ok for these two under achievers.