What is wrong with Miami XC? TERRIBLE results.

XC is not a priority for UM. They recognize they can't be competitive in XC regardless of how much $$ they put into it.

Hurricane Sandy wrote:

XC is not a priority for UM. They recognize they can't be competitive in XC regardless of how much $$ they put into it.

Well, SMU football put a lot of $ in to their football program in the early 80s and had great success with the Pony Express. So, it is folly to say that they won't be competitive no matter how much they "put" into the program.

No one can afford to go their, therefore lowering their batch of recruits. This wasn’t a serious answer, but could be a possibility.

None of you have ever tried to train and race in Miami. It's insane. 85-degrees with 80% humidity and a dewpoint of 60 every single day of the year. 365 days. Tropical climate. And if you're a college student the night life is insane.

Correct. As a Miami XC Alum (90-94) not much has changed. Miami is not a great place to be a distance runner. Hot, humid most of the year, pancake flat, very little in the way of off road training surfaces. The school does not recruit distance runners for the most part. Every now and then but it's more the exception than the rule. Miami has had two runners qualify for the OT Marathon in the past, but it's been a few years since that happened. I was a walk on and most of the rest of the XC team was 800-1500 types who used XC for base building. Plus, at least on the men's side, (when I was there) there was little money for XC/Distance runner recruitment. The women had a bigger budget, but mostly middle distance (800 runners) and shorter distances. Most money went to sprint/jumps recruitment as those athletes can do multiple events and score more points at conference. It simply isn't a priority and likely never will be. Hence the weak performances.

Other Florida schools seem to do just fine.

At least Miami can use their beaches in recruiting. They are surrounded by really nice places to run, too. If Syracuse in the middle of nowhere, NY, with crappy weather year round can do well in XC then Miami has no excuses.

Whatever, it's just not a priority there and doesn't have to be. Look at how much Magness puts into UH and they're still essentially crap.

As an ACC fan, we know Miami gives no scholarships for distance so all those guys are running for the love of the sport and if you ever go to the ACC XC Championship you will hear many fans yelling encouragement for them.

Yep. Miami is the perfect example when people act like running d1 is some high and mighty thing. Anybody who ran in hs can run d1 if they want to.

And take it from me. I've only ran for 4 months and got a few D1 coaches interested in giving me a partial scholarship

hurrikane wrote:

Other Florida schools seem to do just fine.

At least Miami can use their beaches in recruiting. They are surrounded by really nice places to run, too. If Syracuse in the middle of nowhere, NY, with crappy weather year round can do well in XC then Miami has no excuses.

Well miami is pretty far from UF and FSU. FSU and UF actually have more reasonable weather.

Miami is awful at distance running for many reasons: 1) don’t care that much/don’t pay for it 2) terrible location and weather and 3) poor reputation and coaching so can’t attract top talent and 4) academics are mediocre so you can’t even attract people who want a top notch education (like the ivies can).

They actually have pretty nice facilities, the football team pulls in tons of money and the athletic facilities are nice (even the XC locker room). The running areas aren’t great, but they use golf courses around the area and then the typical paved paths by the beach.

But then they also have great nightlife and beaches (which probably makes it harder to be a competitive athlete there). You have tons of bars and clubs, and south beach, so if you are inclined (as many college students are) to go out and party a bit excessively then it’ll be tough to focus there.

Hurricane Sandy wrote:

XC is not a priority for UM. They recognize they can't be competitive in XC regardless of how much $$ they put into it.

Sure. The question is how hard is it to get 3-4 16:00 HS people to show up. Those kids will run 26:40 for 8k the day they step on campus. Over 4 years you will expect 1-2 of them to improve to a 25:30 runner. That gives you a team of 5-6 guys most years. Not great by any stretch but sort of respectable. And it seems like there should be enough 16 min guys (or like 9:50 2 milers) to go around for most DI schools to get 3-4 of them...

Obviously we don't know details like course conditions and if they ran all out or were just doing a race to get in the min required numbers...

dadsfadsfdasfdsafdas wrote:

Hurricane Sandy wrote:

XC is not a priority for UM. They recognize they can't be competitive in XC regardless of how much $$ they put into it.

Sure. The question is how hard is it to get 3-4 16:00 HS people to show up.

Obviously we don't know details like course conditions and if they ran all out or were just doing a race to get in the min required numbers...

It's hard when you can go to UF, FSU, UNF for under $20k with minimal (academic only)scholarships, while it will cost $60k to go to Miami.

A very decent HS runner of mine went there and was part of a good young corp. For many reasons he quickly lost interest.

I've never run there so I dont know what type of training is feasible or wise but this athlete wasn't used to so many quality days early in the season.

His mileage quickly dropped in August.

Before he quit he told me that he didn't want to miss parties every week because of meets, that's not why he went to Miami.

The runners that continued never developed.

This is correct.