MIAC 2024 Cross Country

Given that the sophomores are the first Ole class not recruited by Phil I will be very curious to see how the Oles keep up with the rest of the MIAC after the junior class moves on. If Carleton brings in another strong class, I expect to see a power shift across the river. And if I'm a parent, I pay very close attention to whether the younger guys develop at Olaf or Power continues to talk about Phil's athletes.

A lot of people on this board would be surprised at how little parents care about letsrun message board drama.

St. Olaf domination looks to continue next season, but it'll be interesting to see if hosting nationals helps Carleton's recruiting at all, how the new coach at St. John's continues to develop the team or if Mo's performance at nationals helps leapfrog Augsburg into mediocrity.

Why would hosting Nationals help recruiting? Dickinson, Rose-Hulman, and whatever school is in Louisville haven’t got any better from hosting. Carleton will get better due to being the top academic school the Midwest and having had a strong history of success in Dave’s long career.

Anyone else laugh at Power taking credit for Bocovich’s success on their Instagram? The man cannot stand to be out of the spotlight and loves to take credit when not due.

Or maybe he’s just proud of their alumnus?

Anyone racing this week? Looks like Power couldn’t get the Oles into BU.

If anything, none of his athletes met the standards, or he didn’t feel there were any worth sending. He didn’t have a Will Kelly or a Logan quality runner this fall.

not KEVBOTS gf takes large dookies on him

Rumor has it Power was so disappointed that the Oles didn't win the championship he didn't even fly home with them.

It is crazy to think top 25 All-Americans wouldn't make the BU fields. The Oles have always been a bit stronger in XC than track though. My guess is they have a summer base that is relatively unchecked by Power's training but once they resume his training it is all downhill into the winter.

The professional hating is out of control. They've improved their place at nats in every single year since Power took over, (25th in 2019, 17th in '21, 14th in '22, 13th in '23, 8th in '24). Its also notable that among their current crop of guys, only Fitzgerald was a standout high school runner. Turlington ran 4:27/9:44 in HS and Power turned him into a sub-14:30 guy by his sophomore year and an XC all-American 6 months later. Skemp never broke 4:30 in high school, now he's an All-American before Gabe or Roy. Manzur-Strandlund never ran sub-10 in HS, now he's gone sub 15 and sub 31, and finished top 100 at XC nats. Other MIAC coaches get similar (if not better) talent, and haven't come close to being able to compete with the Oles in the last 3 years, in fact the gap (at least in XC) has gotten larger. Time for the rest of the conference to step it up before the the conference meet starts to become an annual coronation for the Oles. At least when the Carls 4-peated from 16-19, the other schools would at least keep it close.

He made a quick stop by your moms house to do some plumbing on his way back to northfield

Looks like the Oles have decided to travel to Mankato in a valiant attempt to crack 9:00. Interesting to see Tyler Smith entered. A battle with Skemp should be interesting. The Gustie record is only 8:37. Seems like he'd have a good shot at it. Skemp has never run under 8:45, but I'd expect him to try to lead like always.

Finally, the MIAC coaches have submitted a plan to never let Power host again. All the details weren’t shared, but I have learned the coaches have a proposal to vote on creating a much more fair and reasonable championship meet by only racing a neutral course at Highland Park. I have long thought it is silly to allow such blatant advantages to the Oles and Carls. I thought it was dumb that the Oles only left Northfield once this year and that’s a significant disadvantage to low budget teams. Besides, nobody wants to drive all the way to Northfield for every meet of the year. Everyone loved the Como course and there was much more parity then.

Trying to figure out which coach broke the Bro Code and shared this with his athletes. Power has a big mouth, but wouldn't be for it so I doubt it is him. I haven't told my team about any of these proposals or Power's 18 proposals for the track rulebook.

I like the Highland Park course, but it definitely didn't make any difference in who won team titles. I guess if schools want to have their athletes drive themselves or run to the course they save money but I would think it all costs about the same. I can tell you it costs a lot to host meets if done correctly. And Olaf does tend to put a lot into hosting. Carleton too. I guess I don't understand why we wouldn't want to race the Nationals course as much as possible the year Carleton is hosting.

What other proposals has he made? Are any for the benefit of the MIAC or just the Oles? T

This proposal seems designed to restore the MIAC power back to the years where Hamline and the Johnnies ran the pants off other teams. In their mind, if no team can see the course it becomes that much harder for the nationally-ranked teams and something might magically happen to close the gap.

The Highland course is fine. Devin needs to get more volunteers, have better crowd control and maybe a stage with a sound system, but it is a fine for an every once in a while course. I personally like the idea of rotating to other courses. I don't know that I want to go all the way to Concordia, but if Scholastica or Saint Mary's hosted I think it would be cool for them to get that chance. St. Kate's hosts some small meets, maybe they can make something happen.

I loved the Como course. When they got kicked off, I always felt Griak should be the replacement (even though I hated Griak course)

@MIAC_Coach - what came out of the meeting. Were people mean to Power? Did he have a tantrum and run out of the meeting?

It has been well established that dude aint running anywhere except to the pancake line.

MIAC coaches as NFL coaches:

- Power, St Olaf: Andy Reid

- Dave Ricks, Carleton: Vince Lombardi

- Chad Salmela, St. Scholastica: John Madden

- Brenden Huber, Gustavus: Brad Childress

- Dan Schafer, Macalester: Jim Harbaugh

- Munir Isahak, Concordia Moorhead: Bill Belichick

- Nick Larson, Augsburg: Matt Eberflus

- Devin Monson, Hamline: Mike McDaniel

- Darren Schneider, SMU: Kevin Stefanski

- Kevin Rengo, Bethel: Brian Daboll

- Maxwell Kazura, St. John’s: Shane Steichen

Hilarious. Going to need to some explanations for some of these! Please share your reasoning.

A note, that Munir is the assistant so maybe he’s the Wes Phillips of the MIAC?

Power is definitely obese, but I think a better analysis would be Mike Tomlin - the coach of a team that is consistently surprisingly good but everyone outside of Pittsburg forgets about them.

And anyone that has watched a McDaniels interview lately would think Ricks would be a better comparison. The dude is all over the place but also kind of a genus.