Huge Upset!! Army Women DOMINATE Syracuse in XC

pretty good considering most of them spent their summer out in the woods doing GI Jane stuff instead of putting in miles and doing workouts

Syracuse was ranked #24 in the country by Stride Report and #4 in the ACC.

https://theacc.com/news/2020/9/7/notre-dame-men-nc-state-women-tabbed-as-acc-cross-country-preseason-favorites.aspx

NC State is way ahead but Army would be battling against Florida State and Notre Dame for 2nd and 3rd if they were in the ACC.

fact checker 642572498 wrote:

Syracuse was ranked #24 in the country by Stride Report and #4 in the ACC.

https://theacc.com/news/2020/9/7/notre-dame-men-nc-state-women-tabbed-as-acc-cross-country-preseason-favorites.aspx

NC State is way ahead but Army would be battling against Florida State and Notre Dame for 2nd and 3rd if they were in the ACC.

Army women were only 15th at the Northeast Regional in 2019 and 3rd in the weaker Patriot League.

This is the probelm with our sport.

You KNOW Syracuse wasn'r racing their top girl or were trainign through it or were doing a workout. This result is meaningless. Why would you race all in at this point in the season? Silly to do that.

shootpost wrote:

This is the probelm with our sport.

You KNOW Syracuse wasn'r racing their top girl or were trainign through it or were doing a workout. This result is meaningless. Why would you race all in at this point in the season? Silly to do that.

You're the problem with this sport. Syracuse did race their top returner from last year, Vestri. There's no reason to believe they didn't race their top team and race 100% effort. It looked like the men went 100%. Maybe some are injured and maybe some are redshirting, but that's on the coach.

They got beat. Plain and simple. No excuses. I would bet they are embarrassed by it, too. I'm sure the coach gave them a lecture.

Give Army credit, they ran extremely well. They averaged good times on a very tough course.

Army would definitely not finish in the top half of the ACC. I am sorry to tell you that but it's the truth. We will not ever know because the season will end before November but when you see results next year it will be abundantly clear that Army is doing what they can but will not beat a Syracuse men's or women's team in a meaningful meet anytime in the near future.

Pokey Thomas wrote:

Army would definitely not finish in the top half of the ACC. I am sorry to tell you that but it's the truth. We will not ever know because the season will end before November but when you see results next year it will be abundantly clear that Army is doing what they can but will not beat a Syracuse men's or women's team in a meaningful meet anytime in the near future.

Well this was a meaningful meet because it's the only race on online schedule for Syracuse before their ACC championships. They raced their top runner from last year and other members of their top 7. You don't sign up for a dual meet if you don't intend to try winning.

Army had 4 plebes (freshmen) finish before Syracuse's 4th runner. I'd say Army has a very bright future and Syracuse has some work to do.

What makes Army even more impressive is that they have so much more on their plate than school and practice too. If they had all the luxuries the Syracuse women have, this meet would have been much more lopsided.

What's bad for the sport is crappy sports information department. Army's article on the race was in depth and had a3 paragraph long quote from the coach. This is all that Syracuse had in the article: "Vestri won the women's race with a time of 16:42.2 on the three-mile course. Army took the second- and third-place spots followed by Orange freshman Sarah Connelly (17:43.3) and sophomore Justus Holden-Betts (17:47.7). The Black Knights had the remaining top 10 finishers to win the dual meet."

Compare that to the the very informative article from Army:

https://goarmywestpoint.com/news/2020/9/12/womens-cross-country-womens-xc-opens-season-with-win-over-syracuse.aspx

How can we expect people to be fans of the sport when you only give them a 3 sentence description of the race and results?

Wow this is actually shocking. Those Army girls are TOUGH.

Cuse didn't run some of their top girls. This meet was a good morale booster for both teams.

shocked wrote:

Wow this is actually shocking. Those Army girls are TOUGH.

Ugh why is this any surprise? Considering that their school ni general fosters more discipline, it's not a stretch for that mindset to carry over into training and conditioning.

They ran their top runners who were healthy. Maybe they had a couple that were injured but that's not an excuse. The Army coach kept his athletes healthy through a very challenging summer of boot camp combined with hard summer training. Syracuse injured athletes already.

Syracuse just got out-performed and out-coached. That's it. Kudos to Army.

guy that graduated from william and mery won the mens race

I'm glad to see this. It means our country is not in as big of a turmoil as I had thought in recent years. It means, the leaders of tomorrow , who put country before themselves, are up early, working hard, carrying more credits than 90% of the rest of the country, and they can still kick a$$!

Hoo-rah

moefarah wrote:

I'm glad to see this. It means our country is not in as big of a turmoil as I had thought in recent years. It means, the leaders of tomorrow , who put country before themselves, are up early, working hard, carrying more credits than 90% of the rest of the country, and they can still kick a$$!

Hoo-rah

Athletes have it easier than everyone at any school. Even the military academies. I mean, Army PT is no joke for these women who clearly run fast enough to even exceed the Army men's 2 mile PFT requirements.

moefarah wrote:

I'm glad to see this. It means our country is not in as big of a turmoil as I had thought in recent years. It means, the leaders of tomorrow , who put country before themselves, are up early, working hard, carrying more credits than 90% of the rest of the country, and they can still kick a$$!

Hoo-rah

The Army women's team would beat the Syracuse men's team in fight.

Syracuse may have had some women in quarantine. We will never know. Unfortunately COVID and quarantining will have an effect on all sports this year.

Fan of the sport wrote:

Syracuse may have had some women in quarantine. We will never know. Unfortunately COVID and quarantining will have an effect on all sports this year.

I think there might be a rematch in a few weeks.

Army cross country runners don’t “have it easy.” As freshman or “plebes” the women who finished 2 nd and 3rd did, quite literally, spend a good portion of the summer in the woods. Beast Barracks which runs from early July to kid August is some of the most intense military training there is. It made Airborne school seem like a cakewalk. New cadets are up at 5:30 AM and don’t get to sleep much before midnight. The only break that service academy runners get is they get out of most parades and they sit on tables where they can actually eat as plebes. Army’s performance was outstanding