Am I Really a State Champ?

Yes, you're a state champ just like some backup infielder is a World Series champ. You earned your way into the state meet and scored a point. When your local town has a parade and all the state champ winning teams get to ride on a float, you'll be on it. Put it on your running résumé for life

Regardless of what you call yourself, you competed for and contributed to a state championship - a tremendous experience that you should be proud of and thankful for when you look back years from now. Don't get lost in the weeds and divorce yourself of the semantics. Focus on the accomplishment and appreciate it for what it is!

Our school had only 2 distance track runners this year; me and a 5:30 Freshman. That's it. We just don't have the population to sustain deep categories in all events, at least in our division. It's partly because due to small team size, there's no one to chase day in and day out. I literally put my name on the sign up sheet, and in my first year became my school's fastest distance runner. There's also, at least at my school, a laid back approach to track, and it's a secondary sport to many people, including myself. I think the MUS case is rare, but it probably should be changed for D1 and D2 Large. But probably not for the Small divisions. If you look at the D1 Small results this year, the extended fields lead to some terrible times, we're talking 2:30 800s and over 5:00 miles at the back end of the pack. If I'm being frank, private school kids tend not to work as hard on the whole, which might contribute.

Yes, you're a state champion. Congratulations and enjoy it!

I see. It certainly hurts not to have guys to run with. When I was in mid-15s XC shape, I still had guys at my school who could compete with me in the mile and under distances. I will say that it is possible to run very fast training alone though. I, as well as a couple other 901 guys who are some of the top local distance runners in the last decade, ran quite a bit of mileage alone for extended periods and we could still turn out some quick long distance times. If you’ve only been running for a year or so, there’s a lot of room to grow. There’s a lot of great training advice from guys who have achieved excellence in this sport ( 2:10-2:15 marathoners) on this forum if you look for it. Summer of Malmo is a great plan if you want to get better. Wish you the best.

Kudos to you. Keep at it.

Think about this one though: I coach in California and it takes a minimum of 9:07 in the 3200m to make it to the State Meet. So if you run 9:09 at our State Qualifying Meet (Regionals/Sections, etc.) you will NOT be fast enough to qualify for the State Meet, regardless of your school size or division. Crazy huh?

In college I got injured and ran the 10000 at conference. Without running for a month prior to the race. Our team still won. I still claim that we were conference champions.

Another instance. I had a teammate in college. Who won multiple state titles . With times of 4:45 10:30 and 18:30s . While I ran much faster and didn't even score. He is still the champ

Enjoyit wrote:

You contributed to your team score. Plenty of coaches take credit for their winning team when the assistants did all the work.

You are absolutely a state champion.

What do football, soccer and other team sports say when they win it all? “We’re state champs”. Routinely my buddies who won football in HS said “I’m a state champion”.

What if you didn’t run and your team lost by a point? You contributed to a state champion team.

I would absolutely put it on your resume. Tell chicks about it. Exaggerate to your grandma. Who cares.

Hear similar stuff all the time. Always involves lower classes in weak states. Met a guy who anchored his 4x8 to a state title with a time that wouldn’t get him in the fast section of my conference meet. He gets to call himself a state champ, I’m just a sub 2 800 runner who couldn’t break the top 6 on my team. Life isn’t fair.

There is great power and confidence in the statement "We are state champs". Enjoy that.

I run in the slowest division in my state, and I hesitate to call my self a state champ when I ran a 9:51

Dogfish wrote:

short shorts and shorties wrote:

The team collectively can be called state champs. You are not a state champ.

Does this apply to other team sports? Does the starting quarterback on a State Championship football team not get to call himself a State Champ, or does he have to qualify it as he was on a State Championship winning football team.

What you do is tell people "we were state champs in 2019 in track & field." If they want to know more they will ask or

if they seem to want more you can give them the details. Yes, you were on a state champion team.

State Champ is a big thing when it happens and rightly so, but you soon learn in college it is time to reset

the bar and attempt to become a conference or even NCAA champ..........

Wait, did you win the Orion 5k yesterday? You're the one who won the Off Road Series back in February, right? I've been behind you in those races and here you are on LetsRun!

soccerxc wrote:

Wait, did you win the Orion 5k yesterday? You're the one who won the Off Road Series back in February, right? I've been behind you in those races and here you are on LetsRun!

Yep that’s me. And yeah haha I’m on Letsrun quite a bit. I think there’s a couple of other Memphis people on here too. Although there’s a lot of trolling on this website, there’s a whole lot of gems with good training advice/discussion that I keep up to date with.

By the way, good work on the age group award at the race last night. There were a couple of DI runners in your age group who showed so it wasn’t too easy to win an award. Times were ridiculously slow for everyone since the course was measured a bit long and was also very hot and hilly so I wouldn’t read too much into the times. Next big race is Stars N Stripes which is also long so probably not a good race to PR but most of these races are just fun anyway.

Thanks! And yeah last night was pretty rough, I was like a minute behind my PR, but it's early summer and I don't think anyone at least in HS hits peak race form until late fall. I didn't sign up for the whole M-Town series but I'll probably sign up for Stars n Stripes. Were those D1 guys U of M? It's kind of a pipe dream for me to run for Memphis, even as a walk-on. But I got a long way to go before I hit that standard.

Yeah they were U of M guys. Coach Frenette handles a lot of the recruiting and he’s a pretty cool guy. He’s given a lot of local guys opportunities to run. He’d probably let you walk on with a 4:35/10:00/16;30. That’s pretty generous of him considering those are very slow times for DI and he could get a lot better non local guys. I probably would have run there but I had some unfortunately timed bad circumstances senior year that messed up collegiate running for me so I ended up going to UT Knox solely based on Academics. If you can get on a team, I would definitely suggest doing it because it can really help you out socially and also give you an outlet to compete with team mates. You might also want to consider DIII schools like Rhodes. It’s a good academic school and you could probably get on the team with a 4:40 mile but slower 3200 and 5k times like 10:30 and 17:20. That’s very realistic for you and would only require you keep consistent in training and push yourself. Anyway, good luck this next XC season. Just keep chipping away at it and the times will come.

I emailed him earlier in the season, and he was saying about those standards. And that really sucks about your career, you probably would've helped them. The problem with Rhodes is I don't wanna spend that kind of money on college, but if the opportunity arises and I get enough off academically, I'll probably take it. Thanks for your time and the advice!