Best Ivy League School

You are right. We are a bunch of snakes. In fact, we devote an entire hour of practice to developing our "questionable tactics". Rojo makes jimmy and I fight during our intervals. We have a plaque that says "rubbings racing" in our locker room. Sadly, because i am the weakest man in the world, i usually end up getting knocked out. hiss hiss...

Columbia women were 2nd outdoors last spring. There men were 3rd indoors two years ago!

These threads are always so funny and such and entertaining way to stay in touch with my alma mater. Don't forget to CUp the balls fellas.

In_Ithaca wrote:

You are right. We are a bunch of snakes. In fact, we devote an entire hour of practice to developing our "questionable tactics". Rojo makes jimmy and I fight during our intervals. We have a plaque that says "rubbings racing" in our locker room. Sadly, because i am the weakest man in the world, i usually end up getting knocked out. hiss hiss...

McKenzie is that you?

questioner wrote:

Columbia women were 2nd outdoors last spring. There men were 3rd indoors two years ago!

Who said anything about the women? Any CU and Yale women are consistently better than Columbia women. You sited the exception to the rule. On that note you failed to mentioned the string of last and second to last places Columbia has had in track the past few years. That definitely outweighs one third place two years ago.

I don't see what track titles, that include sprinters (Columbia has one), throwers (to my knowledge, Columbia has next to none) and jumpers (again, to my knowledge, Columbia has none) has to do with distance running prominance. When it comes to the only sport dealing with distance running, cross country, Columbia probably has the best average record over the last 7 or 8 years. Not only that, I would say that if you look at depth charts for the 800-10k (not championship record), CU would be pretty close to the top in terms of how fast their guys run. I would be pretty interested in seeing an average time (let's say top 3 guys) for each event from each school 800 up. CU in the 5k last year would have been around what, 14:13 or so? 1500 3:4mid-high? I don't know for sure... but I think CU threw down some fast times on the track between Dusen, Groothius, and a bunch of others who I don't know. But that's all besides the point. Bottom line is that when Willy started and when Craig started at CU, they did as much or more with less in 3-4 years than Rojo. Not a slight on Robert, just pointing out that he is not the only great coach in the Ivy's to take moderate talent and make them great.

I have my complaints about Willy. Like until Sundell, he couldn't get his guys to break through to the National Level. He did a great job of getting them to the top of the Ivy's, but had trouble getting them to the Big Dance. With Galgano, Sundell and Dusen, it looks like he has gotten over that, however...

CONTO - check your Columbia history. What about Casey O' Shea, (multi-time All-American in the Steeple), Tom Kloos, Mike Grant, Ray Biersbak and I am sure many more!

Oh yeah. And any coach who can get you under 8:50 for the 3k is legit!

This is kind of in reply to everything... This isn't to take anything away from Rojo, but to say Cornell stunk at distance before Rojo arrived is saying a lot. Has everybody forgotten about Max King and Dan Dombrowski?

Jerry Smith took Max from a decent freshman to an NCAA Nationals competitor. Max got to NCAA's as a junior under Jerry's coaching, and then again under Rojo... His second time he improved, but that is to be expected with an extra year of training. Dan wound up running 29:30's in the 10K from 3 years of Jerry... Barry Kahn was a 16-something high school runner I think and wound up running 14:36 on the track from 3 years of Jerry and a year of Rojo. In three years, Jerry built up a really good distance team - he deserves some credit too - Cornell didn't suck at distance before Rojo got there, they were running some competitive times with a lot of depth.

I might be mistaken, but didn't Bruce Hyde come to Cornell under Jerry's time? I can't speak for his overall recruitment - don't know enough about it, but he did a pretty damn good job coaching I thought, and was making Cornell into a distance power... From that era a few years back, Cornell didn't have a McArdle on their team, but they had depth in distance for sure.

Nathan Taylor added a lot too... He told everybody his first day that they hired him to make the team good. Within 4 year, men's and women's indoor and outdoor Heps champions. Not to shabby?

Now that Rojo is there, Cornell has definitely picked up it's mid-distance team - he's done a good job... but what he's done for mid-distance is similar to what Jerry Smith did for long-distance and XC...

That's my two cents...

Jerry Smith did a very good job developing the long distance runners he inherited from Lou Duessing. The problem was he did a poor job of bringing in any new ones. Most of Jerry's success stories (King, Dambrowski, Kahn) graduated the same year he departed (Kahn was maybe the next year), and Bruce was ineligable at that point I believe. It would be somewhat fair to say that the team Rojo inherited was very weak in the distances as really all he had were a few freshman and sophs (Tassinari, Mort, etc.) who hadn't really developed into anything yet. It was that two year window under Jerry where there were essentially no recruits that has held back the teams success in XC to this point I believe. Its a shame how little success in the long distances there has been despite Jerry's very good work the previous years with the distance team.

well, i think if you look back to the early 90's, cornell ran well with a young squad. they were 8th in 90, duesing's first year there i believe. then in 91 jumped up to 2nd without brian class. u can say give rojo time, and that he has a young squad, but how much more time should he need. this is in no way meant to discredit him as i believe he has done an excellent job with the guys he has on the track. his boys rolled at penn. but to say young guys can't get it done, well a lot have. maybe he should go after a few diamonds as well as the current athletes he targets. it might be a little more difficult with fox going after upstate talent, but he has an excellent recruiting tool in this website as it promotes his training philosophies.

Rankings, especially US News rankings, are seriously flawed.

See, e.g., my colleague Brian Leiter's incisive critique of US News ranking methodology

http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/rankings/guide.html

It is unfortunate that certain names still carry so much weight, especially given that academic talent is more widely-spread than ever. I'm in academia and I see very little correlation between quality of undergraduate school and quality of the academic work someone produces. The best kids at a place like Texas, Illinois, Michigan, or Berkeley are as good as anyone at Harvard or Princeton. The smartest guy I've ever met (who taught at Princeton for many years) did his undergrad at Swarthmore. The ability to drop a class after the final exam at Stanford and stats like 91% of Harvard graduates graduating with honors also grate.

Claims about Cornell faculty feeling inferior and punishing the students are totally without merit. This may happen, but it's not widespread.

We're not talking about women here. We're talking about the men. Craig Lake took a team that was always dead last in the league and now they are top 20 in the country on a regular basis. Incredible. Hence she was hired at Brown.

The men's side on the Ivy League is not as good as the women. Vin had teams that competed on a national level no one does now.

Rojo's teams did make a name for themselves nationally last year at Penn Relays. Very good showing. I was impressed as a follower of the Heps. I'm not used to seeing Ivy men's teams doing shit.

Columbia may do a good job in XC, they don't in track at Heps. So far vice versa for Cornell although I'll give a coach time to get a recruiting class through college and Rojo's recruits are probably only sophomore's this year? So after 3 more years , we'll give a more complete verdict. But they've won 3 or 4 or maybe more track titles thanks to the improvements in their mid distnaces. Princeton used to blow them out of the water.

If I go to Penn and see a Heps team perform. I'm impressed. Penn has done a good job with a few 800 individual studs and I've noticed as well. A few other scattered individuals throughout the league like Tom McCardle the best i've seen in years.

Conto wrote:

Craig Lake and Willy Wood. Craig on the women's side, Willy on the men's, both took programs with 0 to no talent and within 3 years made them Ivy League rock stars.

I did a search on craig lake due to the brown situation and this thread came up.

Hey dude, Wood came to Columbia in 1994. So his third year would be 1996.

Columbia men won the Heps in 2004. That is not 3 years after 1994. That would be his 10th or 11th xc seasno.

Lake's job was the much more impressive one at columbia.

In my own little world an "Ivy League Rock Star" is top 3 at Heps.

Thank you,

Michael

questioner wrote:

Columbia women were 2nd outdoors last spring. There men were 3rd indoors two years ago!

And I would be willing to wager that you do not go to any Ivy... it would actually have been "their" men who were third indoors two years ago.

Harvard, with its reputation and alumni network would most likely be best for one’s career. Yale & Princeton are close. For running, don’t look at the team results but at which coaches have been most successful at helping talented runners step it up to contend for IVY & NCAA championships.

The below links will show you where the top Ivy XC & track runners went to school and when. Look at the top-10 lists by event. Are you better off going to the Ivy school with the best team, having several talented runners at your level, and only getting a small portion of the coach’s time? Perhaps it is better going to an Ivy school where you might be one of the top runners right away and receive considerably more of the coach’s time. Forget team performance and think about what you really need, a top coach who will be able to give you lots of personal attention. You need to meet the coaches.

Often the best teams don’t have the best coaches – but rather the best recruiters and/or the best financial aid packages. As an example, Harvard’s running teams are usually at the bottom of the Ivy League, perhaps because their coach doesn’t spend much effort recruiting. But their coach is quite knowledgeable and individuals do well under him -- 44 All-Americans as head coach and on the women’s side, he’s had 4 NCAA champs since 1990 and 3 Olympians. Go meet the coaches and keep an open mind.

http://ivyleaguesports.com/article.asp?intID=2442

http://ivyleaguesports.com/sports/top-performers.asp?intSID=1

Wash U.