5050 wrote:
Any ideas on why the South/Southeast does so poorly?
Mainly low expectations. Teams train to squeak out a spot to get to nationals, but don't do the work to compete once they get there. That, combined with somewhat less talented teams (overall) than other regions leads to crappy performances.
I ran for one of the South schools that never, ever got a team spot (men anyway), and I can tell you, our training was completely inadequate. We trained like we were super talented studs, who could get away with doing 65-75 miles a week with a few workouts, and then we were shocked when we got blown away. After having been out of college for a few years, and trained much harder, I can see now that I would've been at least pretty successful if my coach had pushed me a little more, and if I'd pushed myself a little more. It's the same with many of the teams now, with a few exceptions. For the larger, well known schools in the South though, it's mainly laziness and bad coaching.
And that is not intended to single out the schools that actually qualified, because there are a whole bunch of much worse teams that were left sitting at home.