NEW Atlantic Region XC *2009* thread

Geneseo at Home Invite 2008

Lee Berube (FR) 4 25:42 4

Tim Chichester (JR) 5 25:44 5

Jesse Berube (JR) 8 26:03 7

Bill Juda (SO) 9 26:04 8

Tom Reubens (SO) 10 26:08 9

Chris Mateer (FR) 13 26:14

Brett Dolan (SR) 14 26:17

Geneseo at Nationals 2008

Chichester, Tim JR Geneseo State 5:03.5 25:08.41

Berube, Lee FR Geneseo State 5:07.3 25:27.21

Streb, Mark SO Geneseo State 5:07.9 25:30.48

Henchen, Bobby JR Geneseo State 5:09.5 25:38.20

Reubens, Tom SO Geneseo State 5:10.0 25:40.99

Berube, Jesse JR Geneseo State 5:15.2 26:06.65

Juda, Bill SO Geneseo State 5:16.4 26:12.76

looks like a solid improvement to me. you're talking out of your ass.

Dude, you can't compare times like that in XC. Oberlin is a much faster course than Letchworth, and everyone who has been to both courses knows it.

i've never been to oberlin...but how much faster can a course be than letchworth?

Firmer footing, 100% flat (as opposed to 90% flat), and no long stretches run on the bank on the side of a road.

Letchworth definitely isn't a slow course, but Oberlin is most certainly a fast one.

moloradocudstuffin wrote:

Dude, you can't compare times like that in XC. Oberlin is a much faster course than Letchworth, and everyone who has been to both courses knows it.

Nationals weren't at Oberlin last year, it was at Hanover. And it is a much faster course than Letchworth. The conditions at Hanover last fall were cold, yes, but the course was hard and everyone ran fast.

To compare, at NCAAs in 2008 at Hanover 35 men ran sub 25:00 and 170 ran sub 26:00, compared to 16 sub 25:00 and 135 sub 26:00 in 2007 at St. Olaf. And St. Olaf was pretty fast course as well. Also consider 47 women ran sub 22:00 at Hanover last year and only 26 were sub 22:00 at St. Olaf.

To summarize, Hanover and St. Olaf are faster than Letchworth and I agree that Geneseo doesn't seem to improve as much as many other teams throughout the season.

Shit, why did I think it was Oberlin? God I'm dumb.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

i was just looking at last weekend results and came upon st lawrences website that says Dan Ramsey ran the third fastest time ever on their course. that's pretty impressive when you look at two regionals, a state meet, etc in the last 7-8 years. we'll see at the end of teh year

Also, the competition at nationals leads to a much faster race than an early season home invitational. Even if the courses were exactly the same and the races were a week apart, I would expect that they would run significantly faster at nationals.

whoknows wrote:

i was just looking at last weekend results and came upon st lawrences website that says Dan Ramsey ran the third fastest time ever on their course. that's pretty impressive when you look at two regionals, a state meet, etc in the last 7-8 years. we'll see at the end of teh year

And yes this is also true.

I won't bother to put that load of bull from "Past" up again but he obviously didn't pay attention to Cortland's complete distance collapse at the end of the track season last year when Geneseo's distance team buried them at the Sunyac by 30 points (74-44 in the team distance scoring). So much for long term Cortland planning.

This entire thread year after year is about who are the best teams in the AR and who will go to the NCAA in November.

"Past" is putting down a team - Geneseo - who has gone to the NCAAs more times than any other AR team in the last 6 years (that's more than Cortland or NYU or SLU.) If you want to talk about "failure" or "coaching scared" or "not performing up to par" talk about schools that haven't gone to the Championships once in 6 years. I'm not saying Geneseo is the best team, but they are certainly worthy of more respect than they get here. Oh yeah - one more thing - their women's program has gone to the NCAA 10 years in a row as well. That's a very strong past.

I ran for Woodsie for 4 years. My first 8k was 28:44. My last 8k was a 26:16 and I got to live my dream going to the NCAAs. A 2:28 improvement in 4 years is darn good. The guys I came in with and that stayed all 4 years saw nearly the same kind of improvement. In the 10k on the track, I improved almost 4 minutes (36:32 to 32:54). The Past is a liar and knows nothing about the past or the present.

Look, you can take any program you want and find guys who improve alot and guys who get worse instead of better. That happens everywhere. You can take any program and find guys who get hurt and don't do as well because of it. Same thing - it happens in every program.

What you can't find all the time is consistentcy of excellence. In my 4 years at Suny G, we beat Cortland every year and they did not go to the big dance once in those 4 years. Now they have beaten us 3 straight and seem to have the upper hand but Geneseo has not folded its tent at all. Consistency of excellence is hard to maintain in a region as tough as the AR. Geneseo has done this over time.

Look at it this way:

What Atlantic Region Coaches in the past 10 years have won NCAA Championships?

Answer: McDonough from NYU, Patrick from Cortland and Woods from Geneseo.

Start here and criticize downward if you must!

Simple Math wrote:

Look at it this way:

What Atlantic Region Coaches in the past 10 years have won NCAA Championships?

Answer: McDonough from NYU, Patrick from Cortland and Woods from Geneseo.

Start here and criticize downward if you must!

I would put an asterisk next to Patrick. He inherited that team from Moran, the guy before him who built it.

I agree with much of your post. Without trying to insult you, you seem to be a mediocre runner when you can into Geneseo and a slightly above average runner when you left. I think much of the criticism that's being brought onto Geneseo is the development of their top level runners. When someone comes in with really fast HS times, but doesn't show the same percent of improvement as you did, then that is when the critics come out. Not to pick on Lee Berube, since he's a good guy and really talented, but if you run 9:09 in HS, which most of those 9:0x guys go to a really good D1 school, he should have been running in the mid 24:00's last fall. And don't give me the "he was anemic" stuff. Every good D1 program has their blood chemistry tested in the summer so changes can be made and I know a lot of D3 programs that do the same thing.

It just comes down to the fact that mediocre runners are going to improve just by putting in the volume of work that kids at Geneseo do, but a higher level HS'er needs to attack it from a different perspective, which hasn't happened at Geneseo, but has at other schools like NYU and Cortland.

Thank you Vin, that about sums up what I was talking about. Lee should be running much fast than he is, as well as O'Connor, Reubens, and Haskell, all pretty solid runners in high school (What happened to Reubens anyway?). And this is just to mention a few members of this years team-this pattern goes back the last five years, with their top recruits consistently underachieving. I will admit that coach Woods does a fantastic job of developing average runners in high school into good DIII runners in college, but to get into top 5 in the country, coach Woods has to learn how to take is great athletes from high school and transition them better to college, that all I am saying. Geneseo has a rich traditional of excellence, but I just want to see on of the men's Geneseo XC teams perform to their potential. This year's team is arguably a top 5 team in the country, so lets see if this can finally happen.

To comment on a previous post, this thread is about cross country, I do not care what teams are doing on the track. For all we know, Cortand could have taken last outdoor season to train though to prepare for this year's cross country season. But who knows what happened last outdoor season, a coaching change may had something to do with this as well...

Vin wrote:

And don't give me the "he was anemic" stuff. Every good D1 program has their blood chemistry tested in the summer so changes can be made and I know a lot of D3 programs that do the same thing.

Again with the assumptions. How do you know if Geneseo gets tested over the summer? Unless you know that for a fact, which I doubt you do, stop using fairy tales in your argument...

You can't just toss something like anemia off to the side, anyone who's ever had it knows it's pretty debilitating.

Races this weekend?

Geneseo at W. Ontario

NYU and Plattsburgh at Williams (that could be a pretty good race, I didn't check to see if Williams usually runs their top squad)

Ithaca and RIT at Houghton

TCNJ at Haverford

Cortland and Fredonia and SLU Off (Fredonia to Geneseo next weekend, Cortland and SLU to Paul Short)

If you guys want to keep arguing about Geneseo/Cortland, you should start your own thread. Or check any of the AR threads from previous years, we've covered it all before.

Should be interesting to see how Platts stacks up against NYU. This will be the first real gauge for NYU against one of the other top 5 threats.