NCAA Division II West Regionals San Diego, CA

Good post. The AA coach was probably pissed that his athletes had to run 16k in the heat and one of his guys went to the hospital. Towne didn't disrespect anyone and just said that his guys ran great so no one should be mad at him. UCSD's handling of the situation and blaming the runners and fans wasn't the best.

In the end nothing that is said can change what happened. Hopefully NCAA officials will put in more measures to help prevent anything like this from happening again.

Saying that they had measures in place to prevent this, when clearly they did not, IS sugar coating. Having poorly trained race officials does not qualify as having measures in place, or an unfortunate situation or just "human error". It is incompetence.

Not having adequate medical coverage at the finish IS neglecting basic responsibility.

Again, at least the Anchorage coach has the courage to call people out on this stuff instead of being worried about hurting peoples feelings. Come on Chico, show some spine and tell people like it is.

UCSD did not have "measures in place to prevent this". Tell the truth and maybe people will learn and prevent these kind of things from occurring in the future.

"The men’s team then went out and crushed its competition for its seventh straight regional championship behind Scott Bauhs’ individual title. Angel Marquez crossed the line in fourth, Beau Rogers was sixth, Michael Wickman seventh, Manny Mejia 10th, and Jordan Fairley 12th, giving the Wildcats six runners inside the overall top-12. They easily handled second-place Alaska Anchorage 28-67."

I thought the NCAA already had rules and recommendations on how to set up a cross country course. Or are these rules/recommendations only what is needed at Nationals?

There are so many issues with how poorly cross country courses are set up - but this takes the cake! Hopefully some good will come out of it and the NCAA will set up protocol for all meets.

No need to get mad with Chico big Chuck! If you look at most of the releases by other schools you don't see jabs taken at the meet management. I am glad to see that at least someone went out there and will take the heat for saying what really happened and what everyone else out there is really thinking. Hopefully I won't have to run 16k next year!!!!!!!!!!!!

I missed the race Saturday, which apparently now will live on in the memory of D2 runners for years to come. Having followed the West region results fairly closely throughout the season, I would have to say that the 3 teams that should have qualified for the Championship did so. The team that appeared to fare worst from the fiasco was UCSD, which should have been contending with WWU for the 3rd qualifying spot if they were having a good day, but ended up 7th. I have to agree with my fellow exTriton who said that our course really is not suitable for a championship race in its present form. It has sections that are too narrow and it can be confusing to those who haven't run it multiple times before, as evident from the several prior problems mentioned. (Although, for the 2004 local USATF scoring problem mentioned above, I was in the coaches' office at the time, and the scoring problem was due to USATF official, Graeme Shirley, sticking his nose into the race organizers' scoring efforts and drastically slowing down and confusing the process.) Using our course for a Regional significantly raised the possibility of a course error, and we got one at the worst possible time. A lot of former Triton runners are embarrassed by the events and I apologize to the affected teams and runners on behalf of all of us. While human errors happen, the problem and our UCSD team performance really highlight the concern that many of us have discussed about the athletic department's selection process for the head coach, which did not include any former athletes. We Triton athletes like to think that we have built a tradition of good results from from the modest talent we had by working hard. We hope that the weekend's events don't portend a bad trend for the future of our program.

Don't take what Gary Towne said out of context. In all of my encounters with him he has been humble and respectful towards every athlete from every team.

The order of the top three teams played out exactly how they should have, although there probably would have been less of a gap between Chico, UAA and WWU.

Yeah, but just don't tell people that this fiasco was an "unfortunate situation".

Remember, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

I moved to California from the east coast a few years. I had never seen the "alphabet soup" method of course mapping until I moved to the west coast. Back east courses were usually simple: "go around the big loop twice and the small loop once" or "take a right the first loop, then a left the second" or some such. Not this A-B-D-L-D-B-R-A-&-A-B-*-C crap.

Of course there are exceptions, but think of the most famous courses. VCP is basically one big loop (the back hills), then a small loop (up and down cemetary). Paul Short barely repeats itself. Franklin Park may be the most confusing of them all, but even that is straightforward compared to the clusterf*ck of west coast courses.

just curious? wrote:

After seeing both races on Sunday I was wondering if the top young lady from chico was related to scotty bauhs by any chance? I thought both of them looked a lot alike and I briefly talked to the girl during the guys race. I was surprised that her personality was so similar to scott's in away. Quite yet knew her stuff.

the top Chico girl is Tori Tyler

she transfered from washington where she was pac-10 freshmen of the year....shes not related to scotty, its just a coincidence that they have similar personalities...

Classy, thank you for posting.

This race had to do with the UCSD fans ruining what could have been a great race. Personally, I was in the race, I saw it and the "event staff" people from UCSD, ie fans as well because they were yelling for their runners were blocking the correct turn. Point being made, runners from these teams senior seasons and chance to do some damage as a team were stopped because of the rucus. UCSD is a worthless host, all those workers were useless.

Looks like (by the video) the course was some sort of multi use course with chin up bars and the like, also there were too many trees and blind portions and turns that made it easy to get mixed up.

I like scenic courses as well as anyone, but this lookes like a jungle in places where visibility was near zero to the sides.

What is the history of the course..used alot?

This course looks like Chernobyl. If EVERYTHING goes right, it'll work out okay. Otherwise, ka-boom! You should have a larger factor of safety for a championship course.

The KISS rule applies here. From eyeballing the course map, it looks like Out-> 4 big loops-> Back gets you in the ballpark of 10k and you could make up the difference on the starting field. The 4th time you get to L, head straight back to the track.

Totally exclude line segments:

DE

FG

GH

KN

This make more space for spectators, too.

Good post. I'll only add that it's easier to be gracious when you've won.

so here's the deal.. I was in the top group in the race . It wasn't that the slower runners waited for the top group . We had to barge our way through the rest of the field (who were just running slower, since they were farther behind) and we were running somewhat faster than normal to try and establish our position up front

The start shall be located so as to provide a long, straight route from the starting line. The first turn shall be not less than 200 meters, preferably not less than

400 meters, from the start on nonchampionships courses and not less than 600 meters, preferably not less than 800 meters, from the start on championships courses.

Section 2 Article 2b

b. Narrow gaps shall be not less than 2 meters and preferably 5 meters in width for nonchampionships courses and not less than 10 meters in width for championships courses.

Why do the coaches that select the regional ignore the NCAA rules when giving UCSD the chance to host?

Based on the history of cross country screw ups at this site, too many coaches who chose UCSD as a host site overlooked too many errors before this last mistake even occurred.

Every one of these events was run by the UCSD coaching staff, not USATF officials.

NCAA rule 8 section 3.b wrote:

Why do the coaches that select the regional ignore the NCAA rules when giving UCSD the chance to host?

Based on the history of cross country screw ups at this site, too many coaches who chose UCSD as a host site overlooked too many errors before this last mistake even occurred.

Because the coaches spend too much time kissing each other's asses so that they, too, can host regional meets. None of the coaches had the balls (although I'm sure that is going to change) to tell San Diego that their course sucks. While great for dual meets, you can't fit 100 runners, and the fans that will show up, on that course.