Every NCAA 5k championship has at least one NCAA champion. That’s how it works. The 2014 race, however, had probably the two greatest collegiate runners of all time (Lalang and Cheserek) both in prime fitness. Kennedy Kithuka was also a phenomenal runner. A young Mo Ahmed was in the race and got destroyed by the top two over the final lap, and at the time he was roughly as good as McGorty, Fisher and Knight in 2018. Without a doubt the most impressive collegiate only 5k ever.
avnlkkn wrote:
Agreed
The Brojos mentioned I think 2005 NCAA's on the podcast w/ Hall, Solinsky, Dobson, True, Cheseret etc. That was probably more stacked imo in terms of through 10 places. Lalang and Chez were a league above everyone and the others were just basically time trialing on the Lalang train.
Absolutely not. The only thing I'm really an expert on is 2004 XC to 2006 track since I was a beat writer for my college's newspaper at that time and checked track shark (if I'm not mistaken that was the name of the site and maybe there was one other) most weekends.
When I look at a field like this weekend where everyone is under 14 for the 5K and the vast majority of the field is under 13:50, it's a far cry from when I used to cover it.
IIRC, Dobson, Tegenkamp, Solinsky, Eric Lodgeson, Josphait Boit and Peter Kosgesi of Arkansas, Robert Chesseret, and Matt Gonalzees (New Mexico), and possibly Josh Rohatinsky and Stephen Haas were the only athletes under 14 that year in indoors
So I think maybe you had only about 10 or 11 athletes who broke 14 indoors
Outdoors: I think Ryan Hall, Ian Dobson, Nick Willis were safely under 13:30..Tegenkamp, Solinsky, Gonzales, and Chesseret and the Kosgesi/Boit, were floating around 13:30
Ed Moran and Rod Koborski were maybe high 13:30s coming down to 13:30 flat by NCAAs
Kurt Beninger was mid-13:30s
Lodgeson, Nef Aria (Stanford), Rohatinsky, Haas, Simon Ngata (GA), Brent Vaughn, possibly Galen Rupp were in the 13:40s
Benson Chesang and Chris Emme of Stanford was 13:50s, I think McDougal , Seth Summerside and Chris Lukezic barely broke it, I remember Wesley Smith of (NC St) getting 13:59:
So 26 who broke it outdoors and I'm probably forgetting a few..so maybe 27
Ryan Hall and Matt Tegenkamp made the US team that summer but they did it through massive improvements over their NCAA season and distance running was way thinner. I'm assuming Hall and Dobson's 13:22 championship winning time was the collegiate best that year
And that makes sense because these days tons of US athletes are running under 13:10 whereas back then, they couldn't even find 3 people to make the 2004 Olympics
The next year was a bit more spread out:
I can't remenber the collegiate bests but I believe
Solinsky and Boit must have been at the top of the list followed by Peter Kosgesi, Richard Kiplagat of Iona (if he ran a 5K), Marc Rodriguez (Arkansas), Martin Fagan (Providence), Galen Rupp
I don't specifically remember but I'm guessing: Wesley Keating of Texas PA, Seth Pilkington of Webber State, Brett Schoolmester of Colorado , Brian Ollenger (Ohio State), Seth Summerside, Josh McDougal,, Sean Forrest, Haas and Rohatinsky again, and some of the Wisconsin redshirt freshmen along with Tim Nelson and Simon Bairu if he ever dropped down to that distance.
I covered near Georgetown so I'm certain that Matt DeBole and Dan Nunn dipped under and that Zach Sabatino of Tennessee broke 14, and I think Rod Koborski was doing 5th year.
I also think Max Smith of Providence and a couple of Notre Dame's guys might have been sub-14
Again, not a ton compared to today and I don't know if a lot of those guys were doing it indoors.
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