Top 25 at NXN, but have not committed (yet)

Hgffd wrote:

runnER/DR wrote:

Does BYU have any quality recruits this year? So far none of the top Utah guys have committed to BYU.

None of the top 25 at NXN are going to BYU (at this point)

1-Aaron NAU

3-Gorze: Washington

4-Mathison: Colorado

5-Hridesch: Duke

6-Birnbaum: Oregon

7-Breker: UNC

8-Brown: ????

9-Anderson: Syracuse

10-Jones: Wake Forest

11-Leo: Stanford

13-Donis: ???

14-Echohawk:Oregon

15-Kipyego:Iowa State

16: Jenkins: Southern Utah

17-Garcia-Silver:???

18-Ackley: Syracuse

19-Gilstrap: Stony Brook

20-Downs: Cal Poly

21-Horne: Weber State

22-Washburn:NAU

23-King: Iowa State

24-Seymour: Furman

Not sure where Sam Hansen (3rd at Champs) is going.

Utahbhja wrote:

Midmajorissues wrote:

Not against the kid, I’d hope he continue to develop as a runner. But while Doug soles (the herriman coach) has a great track record of creating legendary high school teams while at great oak, none of his greats from great oak have had successful college careers. Absolutely none. All of his sub 9, sub 4:10, runners who were apart of state, national team titles, had an impact on a competitive collegiate cross country team.

However, they all do go on to earn great educations, saving thousands of dollars due to their high school success.

I’m a huge fan of Utah running. Never was good enough, but I’m there at regionals every year it’s at BYU. The year SUU, BYU, and Utah state all broke the top 12 was phenomenal for the state of Utah. Let’s hope SUU rebounds, because none of their “top 3 returners” that you claim, appeared to have broken the top 50 at regionals. Or even performed to their state of fitness like that 2020 XC nationals race, and throughout that season. That goes against the “history of developing athletes”. If you would have told me SUU took a bad turn like this just a few years ago, I would have laughed in disbelief. Is it time for Houle’s impressive reign to retire? Or were there significant injuries this fall, like regionals 2019 when Josh Collins DNF’d and knocked out Weber’s chances to go to nationals? (Terrific team that year, they would have been top 15 as a team with Allen’s all American performance)

Plain curiosity, what went wrong? The young team is no excuse because of Covid eligibility making their athletes appear 2-3 years younger, and because they have had young athletes step up, their whole 2016 team were seemingly all babies with less impressive high school credentials. Utah fans could always rely on SUU making it to Nationals somehow, even after periods of doubt. Provo HS fanboys would look dumbfounded when SUU would have several athletes beat BYU’s scorers, even during their “rebuilding years”. Besides that I can't help but notice that I am still a student at this college and I would like to share with you this source https://studydriver.com/salem-witch-trials-essay/ ; it seemed very interesting to me because there I found a lot of writings that helped me to do my homework, when I said strange - I meant the writing salem witch trials, this really is something unusual, until now I haven't read anywhere about something like that.

Hoping Talley can rebuild the Ogden based team into monsters again. The last few years, their team has been severely underrated, #2 team in Utah at times, but never could show.

Correct me if I am wrong but is this not Soles first year? I wouldn’t be too worried about him overtraining the athletes graduating this year. Overtraining is usually something that takes place over the course of your high school career, I think the seniors and juniors are safe, so I wouldn’t worry too much about Jenkins’ burnout.

In regards to SUU’s season, you’re correct, their top 3 did not get into the top 50 at regionals, but let’s look at their other results. They put 3 guys in the top 32 at pre nats with an average time of 24:10 on a hard Oklahoma course (albeit, not as competitive as other years due to Wisco being the same weekend) with their 4 and 5 being somewhere in the 100’s. At Notre Dame, their top 2 were significantly ahead of the rest (23:59 and 24:09) with their 3,4,5 being too far back to make an impact in the race. At their conference meet, they put 3 in the top 9 and 4 ahead of CBU’s 5 with an average time of 23:33. Their 3 clearly had a bad day at regionals (heard from a friend that their top 3 were dealing with sicknesses). Obviously, regionals is where it matters and they couldn’t perform, but to base their runners performances off of one bad race at regionals wouldn’t be fair.

SUU is clearly having some trouble with depth right now but they are in a big re-building phase. The same friend told me that Stefan Rasmussen (52nd in Oklahoma in 2021) and Kevin Ramos (Their 3rd man from last years national team) are not on the team anymore so that obviously affected them this year. Personally, I believe Houle is doing a great job with the cards he is being dealt with.

And to touch on the developing athletes point, it looks like most of their 9th place team was around 9:10 in high school which isn’t slow by any means but definitely not runners you would think would make up a top 10 XC team. Houle took these athletes and made them into a national caliber team. Nate Ostersock went from 9:11 in high school to 3:56 mile, 7:48 3k, 13:30 5k just this past year. Christian Ricketts went from 9:12 in high school to a 28:40 10k and 13:53 5k guy. Aiden Reed went from 9:06 in high school to a 28:44 and 13:52. Must I bring up Cam Levins and his development? Kasey Kanvelbard? Mike Tate? Nate Jewkes? Angie Nickerson? Alison Prey? All national caliber athletes and several all american honors. The list goes on. And again, these athletes weren’t national studs straight out of high school. It is clear that Houle does a great job of developing athletes so to say he needs to retire after one bad season, with a team that lost a bunch of their top guys all in one year, is just incorrect.