There are 14 teams in Big 10, only 9 men's teams recorded a score at the Big10s. Should Iowa have had 2 guys walk the course?

Guess who won the big ten championships??? That’s right. Iowa. Guarantee you they wouldn’t have won XC. Good decision

Dairyland wrote:

Guess who won the big ten championships??? That’s right. Iowa. Guarantee you they wouldn’t have won XC. Good decision

Guess who would have won the Big 10 Indoor Championship without any distance runners???

That's right. Iowa.

Moot point. Gives the underclassmen great experience. Would you rather have a freshman get 8th in the mile and win an indoor team title or send him to a Xc meet with two other guys and have them not score?

Which is better for their mindset and long term development? Answer is clear to me.

Dairyland wrote:

Guess who won the big ten championships??? That’s right. Iowa. Guarantee you they wouldn’t have won XC. Good decision

My point holds true. By completely bailing on big ten XC, they gained essentially nothing (1 pt in the mile). And, believe it or not the experience you speak of by racing track could have still been had. I believe 3 of the 4 women who raced BIG xc also raced BIG indoors. It was a yellow move by the leaders of the black and "gold"

You are clueless. You are questioning the decisions made by the coach who won the meet. Huh? There is way more involved than you realize. They had a freshman run 4:04. They had a miler get clipped and go down at the finish who would have run 4:04. They had a freshman run 14:19. They had another guy run 14:12. None of those guys ran at the XC meet. Those were PRs for all of them. Ho fast do you think that freshman will run in the mile over the next 3 years or that freshman on the 5k over the next 3 years. The coach obviously knew that running a cross country meet would distract from that type of performance at this meet. You are way too shortsighted. Woody is the best coach in the B10 but a guy on Letsrun knows better.

George Kusche was the most talented miler in the conference. He lost the final. Did hoeft run cross championships? Idk if he did. I know kusche did, he would probably have been more sharp for the track races if he didn’t run cross country. Would have scored more points for Nebraska. To me the track team is more important than the cross country team. Since one is only a subset of the other

rojo wrote:

If we don't view our sport as real, then why would the average person?

It's not real. It's a character-builder sport from a bygone era that failed to adapt with changing times and make itself interesting.

Back when wealthy private schools ruled sports, they didn't worry so much whether everything was watchable or mattered to anyone besides the participants.

World Beater wrote:

You are clueless. You are questioning the decisions made by the coach who won the meet. Huh? There is way more involved than you realize. They had a freshman run 4:04. They had a miler get clipped and go down at the finish who would have run 4:04. They had a freshman run 14:19. They had another guy run 14:12. None of those guys ran at the XC meet. Those were PRs for all of them. Ho fast do you think that freshman will run in the mile over the next 3 years or that freshman on the 5k over the next 3 years. The coach obviously knew that running a cross country meet would distract from that type of performance at this meet. You are way too shortsighted. Woody is the best coach in the B10 but a guy on Letsrun knows better.

Nice try. My point still holds true. Bailing on the xc meet did not help them win the indoor meet. To further that point, it also did not help them perform better in xc next fall

You’re mistaken again. You’re also mistaken that Iowa really cares about XC. This is a track school that gets a lot of their value in their sprinters and 800m runners. They didn’t even run some of their top 800 guys and this had one guy get second.

Track > XC always, but especially for Iowa

Maybe their 800 guy who came out of nowhere to finish 2nd, trains with some of the XC guys who they held out. They wanted them to continue train. Maybe some of the XC guys are roommates with the top sprinters so they didn't want them staying in a hotel a month before this meet and then returning and possibly infecting the top sprinters. I just can't get over that somebody is questioning the team who won. You sound like the angry parent who has a kid on the bench of the high school basketball team that wins state but you continually undermine the coach because you think your kid is better than all of the starters.

Agree with this take. Iowa won big ten indoor with 3 total distance points. Owen Hoeft ran big ten cross and won the mile. They could’ve fielded a team for big ten cross.

On the women’s side MN was second in big ten cross and dominated big ten indoor. Their distance runners were a core part of the indoor win. Clearly running cross didn’t hurt them last weekend.

Iowa had a 7:59 3k runner get injured from running the cross race so had to DNS at Big Ten Indoors. They only scored 3 points in distance but those points couldve been difference between first and second place but they ended up dominating. They also have a young squad and with track as the focus they got experience for the future.

Saw him running without a shoe at the B10 XC meet. 7:59 could have scored some points had they also held him out.

https://hawkeyesports.com/news/2021/03/03/joey-woody-named-b1g-mens-track-and-field-coach-of-the-year/

Track>XC wrote:

Iowa had a 7:59 3k runner get injured from running the cross race so had to DNS at Big Ten Indoors. They only scored 3 points in distance but those points couldve been difference between first and second place but they ended up dominating. They also have a young squad and with track as the focus they got experience for the future.

Or maybe he got injured because they ramped up his training too fast and paid the price for not taking a long view.

No. It was due to getting trampled and then running the last 7k without a shoe.