MIAC XC 2021

How do you M.I.A.C. gals &/or guys do it? Are there a couple dozen graduates of M.I.A.C. schools and you gals&/or guys keep in touch with your former schools? Are you all in your sixties? Is it expected that every group of 17 or 18 year old freshmen carry the torch and post on here? What is the back story with you gals &/or guys? Are the majority of you Minnesotans by birth and K-12 at a MN high school? Are the majority of you northeasterners or southerners seeking a different experience?

The oles might have choked pretty hard at eau claire but they're still a serious threat to win conference. Their sophomores have been both fast and consistent, butch and lawhead have been consistent, and reuben and bobo are clearly both capable of top 10 finishes, even though one of them will probably run a 27:30 for some reason. If they somehow all put it together for conference and peak at the right time, they will be tough to beat. They definitely won't though.

The gustavus might win conference take looks progressively less dumb every week. The individual race is Stumbo's to lose, and Grant and Hinchcliffe will probably combine to score not too many points. If Knutson and Olson both make moderate steps up and all of their 5 race well, they will at least keep the Northfield schools honest. Lack of depth could be a problem though.

Speaking of lack of depth, carleton better pray that their top 5 stays healthy and doesn't choke at conference. Lavey and Santos will combine to score single digit points in all likelihood, but the other 3 have some question marks hanging over them. Nakasaka, Bowman, and Sather could all finish top 10 or miss out on all conference depending on which iteration of them shows up. Carleton is probably more vulnerable now than at any point since the pre-wilkinson/mueller era.

St. John's and St. Scholastica will contribute a top 10 finisher each (outside chance at 2 for scholastica with dewall), and otherwise be pretty irrelevant. Same story concordia with munir.

The other teams will be mediocre and say "at least we're not hamline". hamline will say "at least we're not saint mary's". Saint mary's will say "maybe next year we'll be able to field a full team".

Check back in the weekend before conference for a full preview, complete with predictions for all all conference spots.

@oles: You guys clearly have enough depth that you don't need to run all your runners at every meet. Use some of them to bring back the St olaf xc youtube channel

a former MN hs runner wrote:

How do you M.I.A.C. gals &/or guys do it? Are there a couple dozen graduates of M.I.A.C. schools and you gals&/or guys keep in touch with your former schools? Are you all in your sixties? Is it expected that every group of 17 or 18 year old freshmen carry the torch and post on here? What is the back story with you gals &/or guys? Are the majority of you Minnesotans by birth and K-12 at a MN high school? Are the majority of you northeasterners or southerners seeking a different experience?

i'm a 2011 grad of one of the MIAC basement dwellers and don't keep in touch except with a few buddies from my era. but finding results online is ludicrously easy and there's clearly a few of us with time on our hands to browse and post here. i'm probably gonna go watch the conference meet for the first time since ~2012 this year because i'm enjoying watching this thread and following the sport in general. it's not like it's a huge time commitment.

a former MN hs runner wrote:

How do you M.I.A.C. gals &/or guys do it? Are there a couple dozen graduates of M.I.A.C. schools and you gals&/or guys keep in touch with your former schools? Are you all in your sixties? Is it expected that every group of 17 or 18 year old freshmen carry the torch and post on here? What is the back story with you gals &/or guys? Are the majority of you Minnesotans by birth and K-12 at a MN high school? Are the majority of you northeasterners or southerners seeking a different experience?

I'm from Minnesota. 2017 graduate of a MIAC school, always curious how things will shake up.

a former MN hs runner wrote:

How do you M.I.A.C. gals &/or guys do it? Are there a couple dozen graduates of M.I.A.C. schools and you gals&/or guys keep in touch with your former schools? Are you all in your sixties? Is it expected that every group of 17 or 18 year old freshmen carry the torch and post on here? What is the back story with you gals &/or guys? Are the majority of you Minnesotans by birth and K-12 at a MN high school? Are the majority of you northeasterners or southerners seeking a different experience?

From the cities, MIAC class of 2020. My guess would be that most posters here aren't actually current MIAC runners anymore

St. Thomas would have won D3 this year. No MIAC title will ever be legitimate again

Gustavus 5th at Jim Drews.

https://results.wayzatatiming.com/meets/11426

Would've been really interesting to see where Olaf and Carleton's guys would've placed here. A somewhat accurate North region preview though (minus Whitewater obviously)

For the men, Carleton 3rd and SJU 6th at Lewis and Clark today.

https://live.athletictiming.net/meets/11454/xc-events/379699/live

SJU was missing their No. 1, but it wouldn't have changed their overall placement.

Carleton looked really good, I thought.

Don't know the women's results yet (the website is wonky), but Carleton's women also looked really good. St. Ben's was there with Fiona Smith looking strong.

Someone asked about who posts/follows threads like this? I'm an alumnus from the MIAC, from about 30 years ago, and just love running, so I follow what's going on.

Makes Paper wrote:

For the men, Carleton 3rd and SJU 6th at Lewis and Clark today.

https://live.athletictiming.net/meets/11454/xc-events/379699/live

SJU was missing their No. 1, but it wouldn't have changed their overall placement.

Carleton looked really good, I thought.

Don't know the women's results yet (the website is wonky), but Carleton's women also looked really good. St. Ben's was there with Fiona Smith looking strong.

Someone asked about who posts/follows threads like this? I'm an alumnus from the MIAC, from about 30 years ago, and just love running, so I follow what's going on.

That Lewis and Clark course is notoriously short. Still an impressive performance by Carleton.

Sad Really wrote:

Makes Paper wrote:

For the men, Carleton 3rd and SJU 6th at Lewis and Clark today.

https://live.athletictiming.net/meets/11454/xc-events/379699/live

SJU was missing their No. 1, but it wouldn't have changed their overall placement.

Carleton looked really good, I thought.

Don't know the women's results yet (the website is wonky), but Carleton's women also looked really good. St. Ben's was there with Fiona Smith looking strong.

Someone asked about who posts/follows threads like this? I'm an alumnus from the MIAC, from about 30 years ago, and just love running, so I follow what's going on.

That Lewis and Clark course is notoriously short. Still an impressive performance by Carleton.

Even if that course is 100 meters short and you add ~19 seconds to Carleton's top 5, times still look good. And I doubt it's that short.

One of the Loras kids posted on Strava, it was 4.90, which would be over 100 meters

Hey there, a really late reply. It’s Meaden. SMU has a mega small presence in Winona. They’ve gone from 1,000 students on campus my freshman year(17-18) to just barely above 900 this year according to people still on the team. We had decent financial aid that was somewhat competitive with other schools.

However, I think the largest reason for a small team would be the administration. My freshman year there was Brother William as president and he had pretty different views than Father Burns the current president. The school from my perspective went from a university with a slight catholic background, to a religious school that did some university things.

I chose the school for the major and the old coaches Berndt and Anderson.

There was some issues with the old athletic director that played some factors in Berndt leaving. The new athletic director has some other problems that has resulted in an almost fully clean house in all sports. That has not been unnoticed by anyone. Because of that it was incredibly difficult to recruit. Especially when you have recruits who are looking at other schools who offer the same things with a much larger established team.

As for the education, the school is going full in on biology and chemistry for the sciences. The new nursing program may help as well.

The business side of the game does ok and the teaching programs pull a lot of people too. The seminary on campus has enough people for philosophy and theology to be a big major. Most other social sciences are starting to be a little hidden so there’s that.

Any other questions I’ll try to answer at some point.

I heard Saint Mary’s still has no WiFi.

I heard Joe Coffey is still pretty good. Pay-per-view Coffey vs DCG in the 1k? I’d watch that.

Here is one logical all-conference/honorable mention lineup. There are many. This is just one. A few roadblocks when putting this together: a) Results have a lot of contradictions, and some of these picks might not make a lot of sense. Not a lot I can do about that. b) Lewis and Clark Invite had some crazy times for Carls and Johnnies, so its hard to know what to make of the meet - 3 Carls have PRs faster than Stumbo’s but this probably doesn’t mean anything. c) Several Oles and Hinchcliffe have had some inexplicably bad races, so we don’t really know which iteration of them will show up.

1. Stumbo - Gustavus, 2. Lavey - Carleton, 3. Curtis - St. Olaf, 4. Santos - Carleton, 5. Bocovich - St. Olaf, 6. Boone - St. Scholastica, 7. Isahak - Concordia, 8. Kelly - St. Olaf, 9. Young - St. John’s, 10. Bowman - Carleton, 11. Nakasaka - Carleton, 12. Kosche - St. Olaf, 13. Grant - Gustavus, 14. Goldsmith - St. John’s, 15. Cassidy - St. Olaf, 16. Knutson - Gustavus, 17. Grand - St. John’s, 18. Dewall - St. Scholastica, 19. Mendel - Bethel, 20. Hinchcliffe - Gustavus, 21. Sather - Carleton, 22. Lawhead - St. Olaf, 23. Tanner Olson - Concordia, 24. Lynn - St. Olaf, 25. Casey Olson - Gustavus

St. Olaf - 43

Carleton - 48

Gustavus - 75

St. John’s - ~95 (Allen and Hensel both have decent top 30 chances)

Concordia - ?

What happens after this is not the focus of this post.

Some brief explanation: This assumes that the underperformiest Oles, i.e. Bobo and Reuben, get it sorted out and race as well as they are capable of racing. If the Ole pack stays together thru the first half or so of the race, they will be tough to stop. I also have Hinchcliffe not doing well, but he could possibly challenge for top 10 if he gets back on form. Regardless of what Hinchcliffe does, Gustavus looked pretty mediocre at Jim Drews and will need a fantastic race to unseat Northfield. Mendel is really hard to place because he hasn’t raced at meets with other MIAC athletes, so there’s some guesswork here. Other than that, there are some quibbles one could have with these predictions but there aren’t any blazingly hot takes. Pretty vanilla actually.

The only way to know for sure what will happen is to wait for the race and let the chips fall where they may.

Absolutely terrible take here. Oles are finished. Ruben Arne and Derk and Bobo are washed. Boone’s taking the dub in 24:30 guaranteed

D3 Glory Days has posted its MIAC preview

https://www.d3glorydays.com/read/miac-preview

I am confused by status of University of Saint Thomas-MN. Summer, 2020 it was stated all Saint Thomas varsity athletics would be D-1 by July, 2021. Athletic.net still has Saint Thomas listed as a M.I.A.C. school. I tried to email athletic.net for clarification. They are mad at me because I roll athletic.net emails to spam, so athletic.net won't respond. I see the football team has a D-1 schedule. I saw on athletic.net Saint Thomas had a meet versus Saint Mary's. Are Saint Thomas out of M.I.A.C. for XC or not?

They list on their schedule they are going to the summit league champs this weekend, not MIAC.