D1 Women’s XC Championship Simulation Countdown

Agree SE very good, but California schedule and Mt Sac courses were complete non issues for her.

- Mt Sac- about 1000 kids will run that course this weekend at invitational and again in state region meet. How many will get hurt? How many will thereby perform worse at NXN/FL? Other courses like Bowdoin Park are just as demanding. If Mt Sac was a true problem, would not coaches, parents and administrators avoid it, or lobby for change?

- CA schedule. The State meet run up in xc and track is indeed long and unforgiving. Thing is other regions like Northeast and Midwest are still running every weekend from Oct 15 til NXN. These schools run league, county, section, State, meet of Champs, NXR all in a row while Cal goes thru State meet process.

Because Cal's State process is long, they do not have to deal with a meet of champions, or NXR CA, they just use the merge from State Divisions to pick their NXN teams.

Sure Sadie Engelhardt did not run great in national xc meets, (NXN '23 26th, '24 11th), but it has nothing to do with Mr Sac, or CA State Meet program.

SE can actually use this as motivation to make a nice debut at ncaa xc this year.

By the way Napoleon from NY; she is happy on a muddy, torn up, cold course.

Coaches of top 5 national teams and top 10 individuals are usually careful in how they race their teams through the year end stretch. These teams are good enough that they can tempo some meets, or rest some runners along the way. This keeps them fresh for the national meets.

CA teams and individuals often do quite well at NXN Nats. J Serra, Buchanan and about 5 individuals are very good this year; in the mix for the podium.

I was primarily referring to how those ‘cross country’ courses, with their steepish drops and asphalt pavement in places, might deceptively beat up a runner.

This video of the record race, between Blade and Englehardt, shows the Woodward Park terrain pretty well:

Since you mention it, didn’t Sean Brosnan have his Newbury Park squad avoid Mt. Sac?

And they actually did make changes to the course in recent years.

Thx, I'm aware what these courses are like.

I'm just not aware of any CA runners who chose not to run these courses to save themselves for college and pro.

Engelhardt, Hasay, Sarah Bei, Blade, Thomsen, Chamberlain example of Cal runners so far so good in college xc.

Trotter, Baxter, Lane, Knights are CA stars who did not transition well to NCAA. There is no proof that the reason for this result was Mat Sac, Woodward Park or long CA xc season.

Both the successes and the failures dealth with same courses and schedule.

Yes, downvoter, he did, per the following thread,

“Brosnan never brought his teams to the Mt. SAC invite after then first year. He was very vocal about not agreeing with the Mt. SAC course.”

”I recall Newbury Park in the Brosnan era never racing that course and being admittedly against running the course.”

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=13110205&page=3

What are you doing now trying to shift-shape the discussion? Nobody in this thread, until you brought it up, said runners were avoiding MT. Sac “to save themselves for college and pro.” 🙄

True. Newbury Park did skip the invitational a couple times, but still had to run there at Southern Section Champs to qualify for State meet.

I would also claim that performance at NXN and Running Lane of Nico Young, Lex&Leo, Colin & Aaron and Jace Aschbrenner had zero to do with Mt Sac, or the CA State schedule.

They ran very well, and have gone on to so far have a variety of results at college level.

Says the guy that sounds bummed Brosnan coached what is noted in some circles as one of the greatest, if not the greatest ever, high school cross country team.

Ever heard of the phrase ‘Rupp certified’?

That’s the most worthless validation one could ask for, but BYU deserves to be #1.

Flotrack

They currently have NC St Individuals ranked 2/9/12/22/47 ==>92

They currently have BYU individuals ranked 3/20/29/50 and ??? Insert Hutchins at 15? ==>117

They rank BYU 1

Stride Report
They currently have NC St Individuals ranked 4/7/18/20/36 ==>85

They currently have BYU individuals ranked 3/13/44 and ??? Insert Hutchins at 15? and someone at 55? ==>130

They rank NC St 1

I think at 1-3 + 5 the teams in total are very close (including Hutchins) but right now it seems NC St has a decent edge at #4 while BYU has a decent edge at 6/7 (essentially 3 equal #5s). But that is based on just the latest race.

Stride Report probably reads this thread. 😁

I am confused. Which one should we trust more, faith or math? I was playing poker last night, I kept on betting against the odds as I was holding a straight flush draw. I was just one or two cards short. So close!

But it is the latest race that is the tell, my friend.

NC State not only matches up well on the front 3, but there big #4 and new #5 are the reason they are now the overwhelming (oops, trigger alert 😆) favorite for the Trophy.

A joke is something that makes others laugh.