Talkin' HEPS

The point is... why aren't more of those high school studs in positions to score at a meet like the heps. Don't you think 8:56 high school two milers should be able to get in 14:40 shape? not at princeton

I think it's easy for people on this board to make team-wide generalizations about Princeton without knowing each runner's individual situation/history -- particularly when it comes to criticizing freshman without factoring in the difficult high school to college transition. What strikes me about this thread is that, because of some isolated performances from one meet, people are singling out runners who have improved greatly over the course of their careers (which is what's really important in evaluating a program). Some of the runners named in this thread had terrific performances at indoor Heps in 07, while some of the Cornell runners who came up big this year ran poorly then. Let's not go crazy drawing all sorts of conclusions about the recent history of Princeton's distance program based on one weekend.

Isn't it the job of the coaching staff at an institution to make this transition easier for his or her athletes. And if there is a vast number of athletes poorly transitioning from high school to college, can't it be inferred that this is a program wide issue?

"Some of the runners named in this thread had terrific performances at indoor Heps in 07, while some of the Cornell runners who came up big this year ran poorly then. Let's not go crazy drawing all sorts of conclusions about the recent history of Princeton's distance program based on one weekend."

Hear, hear.

Some of the Cornell guys who ran not-so-hot at indoor Heps last year had a terrific Heps outdoors. Did Rojo suddenly get smarter in a couple months?

Similarly, Princeton drilled the other Ivies in the Heps x-c last fall. Did Steve Dolan get dumb between then and now?

I think the answer to both questions is "no." Things happen. Sometimes they happen to a team; and sometimes they happen to several individuals, and by coincidence happen at the same competition. In either case, judging a program and a coach by one meet--any one meet--seems foolish to me, *particularly* when the coach and runners involved have previously demonstrated their competence on multiple recent occasions.

I may be the Big Red Fan, but I don't care to see Dolan and his athletes (some of whom, by the way, competed very well last weekend) demeaned this way. And I'd bet these remarks are not coming from Cornell folks.

Princeton underachieved at this meet, but the other 6 teams had plenty of issues as well. For example, Penn had two runners who beat Zach Hine in XC - Goldberg and McEwen - these two athletes didn't even run I'm assuming due to injury. Kyle Calvo was a Penn Relays HS champion in the high jump but only mustered 6-2 in the heptathlon (illness ?).

While Cornell has not necessarily always been the classiest champion, they have recently (the Nathan Taylor era) performed when it counted - at Heps - and they deserve praise for this.

Some real questions need to be asked... and answered.

1.) What does MFA stand for?

2.) What is Bruce Hyde up to these days?

3.) What happened to Jimmy on saturday night?

4.) Does anyone on Cornell's distance team not own a blazer?

5.) Is anyone in the league a nicer guy than Kajala?

6.) Who was LBP pointing at?

7.) Will BT pull a Maduka for next year's indoor season?

1. Master of Fine Arts - Why Brown thought this was important, I have yet to figure out.

2. Playing poker and hanging around Ithaca. Bartends at The Royal Palms.

3. God only knows.

4. Nope.

5. Guzman

6. His fans?

If you went to Princeton would you really want to be running all the time?

5. False.

I have seen Guzman go up to Cornell guys (spectators wearing Cornell Shirts, not competitors) and say "f*ck Cornell". I saw him do this indoors at HEPS in 07 just before the 800 final. He is a dick with a name that is fun to say; that's about it.

yeah, sarcasm.

I can't believe some of the ignorance being shown on this thread. Princeton has one bad meet and everyone suddenly knows everything about every runner and every coach at princeton. I'm not saying I know that much about what's going on there but give me a break Talkin' Heps. You think Princeton is the laughing stock of the Ivy League? They almost beat the old Heps record for points! What about the teams who barely got 20 points. Seriously, think for a second. You're saying Princeton just gets all this talent and turns it into nothing. I obviously need to say very little for Maag and D Night who have both improved a ton. Maag's freshman year outdoors, he almost went through in his 2 mile pr on his way to a sub 14:10 5k. Oh bet no credit due to the coaches right? I don't care if they were good in high school. They are doing great under the current coaching staff, and while a lot of credit goes to the runners themselves, some must still go to the coaching. Sitler ran great in XC, and they were pretty damn close to qualifying as a team for Nats. And what about the fact that Indoors is really just that time between XC and Outdoors. Does the season's insignificance mean nothing to you guys. They still had 2 guys under 8 in the 3k and 5 under 8:20, plus 2 more in the 8:20s. Yea thats so horrible. And make sure you don't say anything about how all the Ivys get a shit load of recruits who run fast in high school. Columbia got some really great guys last year, and it's not like LBP didn't run 4:09 in high school. Would you all think from now on please.

does anyone have photos or more importantly video from the meet?

Kaijala is a nice guy.

Guz is a nice guy who hates Cornell.

1) Mighty Fine Athlete ( or mighty fine ass depending on the runner)

5) nope - Tim is a great guy and a great runner - I hope he makes it to nationals this year

6) The Columbia section I'm guessing

What's up with the Dartmouth women? Is Maribel Sanchez still the coach?

you are not intelligent wrote:

You just assume these guys were amazing in high school because they are good now?

Hardly an assumption. I've just looked up a lot of stats to fill in the uninformed as to how good Princeton's recruits have been. Nightingale ran 15th at FLNE as a sophomore, the top 10th grader, ahead of fellow sophs Ahmed Haji and Ben True. Any way you slice it, that's good talent. In terms of the number of guys that can do something like that (roughly top 60 in the country), it probably stacks up to about 9:13 for 3,200 ... as a 10th grader. I believe Alan Culpepper wasn't quite that fast as a sophomore.

Here are a few other recruits on Princeton's 2008 roster:

Sitler 8:53 3,200, 7th FL finals

Amirault 8:56 2M (about 8:53 for 3,200)

Soloff 9:01 2M (8:58 3,200)

Grote 9:00

Maag 8:26 3k (9:03 3,200)

Price 9:05

Tinney 9:08

Sharkey 4:15 mile, 9:12 2M (9:08-high 3,200)

Speare 9:10

Predmore 9:12

O'Toole 4:14, 9:13

Joy 9:14

Campfield 4:15 mile, 9:14

Andrews 4:07

White 4:11 mile

Average of top 10 3,200 times is 9:03-9:04.

They're landing significantly the best long distance recruits in the league. Those 3,200 times average at least 10 seconds faster than the average of the top 10 recruits of any other Ivy team. Cornell has ONE guy at 9:05 (Dannemiller) and their 10th best is probably around 9:30. A 9:05 is their best 3,200 recruit in forever and Princeton has 6 guys faster out of high school on their current roster. Yes, Princeton did win in cross and that's commendable, but OF COURSE they should dominate in cross. Look at it this way - their top 10 high school 3,200 recruits average about 14 seconds per man slower than Oregon's top 10 high school recruits, and wouldn't you expect Oregon to destroy them? Hells yeah. Of course teams have ups and downs and injuries, but with all that backup talent available, Princeton has no excuse for being beaten EMBARRASSINGLY by my alma mater in the distance events at BOTH last year's outdoor championships on their own track and this year's indoor meet. That would almost be like Oregon being outscored by Princeton in distance events at a hypothetical conference meet. Their last two conference track meets have been massive subpar performances.

On the plus side, whenever you have two sub-8s in the 3k the same year who are also All Americans, you can't be doing everything wrong, even if those guys were pretty talented in high school. Then again, Andy Miller of Cornell never broke 4:25 in high school and he could probably run 4:02 or faster if he rode the train Maag had in his 4:00 on an oversized track. He just beat Maag and probably the only kind of race Maag could beat him in would be one where others ran sub-4 ahead of both of them and dragged them along. So if you want to talk about how much a guy or two here and there have improved, for Princeton's Maag, Cornell has a Miller. For a Nightingale, there's a Smayda (1:57 high school to 1:50 college, with 29 points in individual events at conference meets). What people are knocking Princeton for is because they have far more guys who don't improve very much or at all from high school. But hey, no problemo. If they just keep getting way better recruits than the rest of the league, maybe one or two each year will pan out and they'll get the occasional diamond in the rough, then they'll have enough to make a conference champion cross team, so it doesn't matter if they aren't really improving people on average. So it's like the more nuts you put in the yard, the more of them a blind squirrel can find.

Not really trying to bash Princeton too much to make a plug for my former team. Princeton is doing alright in cross and have a few guys putting up great track times. They're doing some good things, but CU is doing a shitload better with the level of recruits they have and the recent results bear that out. All of their mid distance guys made their finals and all but one scored, that guy missing by one spot. And they outscored Princeton in the mile and the 5k despite Princeton's loaded roster. Hine kind of lucked out by not having to face Nightingale or Maag in the 5k, but first is first, so screw 'em. The rest of the guys in the field would have loved to have won and they didn't, so if anybody thinks it was a weak event, it wasn't Hine's fault. And the way Princeton was running at that meet, Hine might have hung in there and made a race of it even if Nightingale and Maag had been in it. 14:25 might not sound that impressive, but to do that in Barton with the last 8 laps completely solo in 4:25 is not bad at all. He's a worthy champion and so is the whole CU team. They brought their A+ game to the meet. Congrats guys.

Who does Princeton have that hasn't improved at all? Besides one or two guys,whose personal situation we could never know, who haven't they produced? Why don't you go down that list and look at what those guys PR's are now. Their top recruits are unfortunately have had some non-running related injury trouble, but if you look closer they have a 4:11 frosh nobody's ever heard of. I won't bother to list the others. It's easy to call out frosh/soph's who are struggling bc of the transition, but the end of the day they will continue to dominate the league if they just get their guys healthy.

I hope any HS recruit who is looking at princeton sees this thread.

1) nope, MFA does not mean "Mighty Fine Athlete"...it's a well kept secret..