CU/Wetmore last male NCAA Champ was Ritz- 18 yrs ago

Having an individual champ on your team is like catching lightening in a bottle and isn't the best metric of a coach's performance. How have his teams done over the years?

try this? wrote:

Having an individual champ on your team is like catching lightening in a bottle and isn't the best metric of a coach's performance. How have his teams done over the years?

Curious about that also, how have they done?

Klecker would have won something indoors or outdoors last year If the season did not get canceled due to covid.

How many have Tulsa won in the same timeframe?

Is Coach Gulley now more relevant than Wetmore?

Bibi goes home devastated wrote:

try this? wrote:

Having an individual champ on your team is like catching lightening in a bottle and isn't the best metric of a coach's performance. How have his teams done over the years?

Curious about that also, how have they done?

Solid top 15 finish in XC this year.

Marc Scott and Patrick Devers.

2 is better than 1!

4L wrote:

Marc Scott and Patrick Devers.

2 is better than 1!

Chris O’Hare also?

Poltergeist wrote:

Correct me if I’m wrong but it looks that the last time CU had a male ncaa champ was 18 years ago.

How does this happen? Why do people say he’s such a good coach…? Very overrated?

There was a time where the top recruits would go to Colorado. Now they are going to NAU. The niche they had with training at altitude is no longer the only option for incoming high schoolers. Does this mean Wetmore is a bad coach? Of course not that would be ridiculous.

I was in Florida all the time, when I was also a CU student. I realized that heat and humidity were a good replacement for altitude, and that maybe Frank Shorter had been right.

All it's going to take is one championship distance runner from a Gulf State to open the door for those schools to take NAU marketshare now.

I feel like coaching someone like Pierce Murphy with 4:29/9:14 PBs in HS to 5 top 5 NCAA finishes at CU is better coaching than getting an 8:44 guy to a national title. Or Hornbecker to All-American.

Nevertheless, with respect to the studs he's gotten, Klecker likely would have won a national title last spring and was 2nd in cross. Dressel was twice top 10 in cross and 4th indoors. Lalo had inconsistent results for sure, but did run 13:24. And then there have been guys who never materialized, for a variety of reasons, Rocha, Fendl. Not sure what is up with Harrison. He looked very promising after cross in 19. I cant say if these misses are more frequent than other top programs.

He did coach the top maleTriathlete in the US and two female track and field world champions. That has to count for something.

Former Golden Buffalo wrote:

I was in Florida all the time, when I was also a CU student. I realized that heat and humidity were a good replacement for altitude, and that maybe Frank Shorter had been right.

All it's going to take is one championship distance runner from a Gulf State to open the door for those schools to take NAU marketshare now.

Shorter trained in a lot of locations.

Wetmore can take not quite studs in high school to top ten guys in NCAA XC. He can take average high school guys to All-Americans in NCAA XC. Jury is still out on Mike Smith in this regard, but Wetmore and Ray Treacy are literally the only coaches in the country who can make you nationally competitive in college and you still have room to grow for a decade post-collegiately.

Not specific to Wetmore, but in distance running where peak performance for US athletes comes after college, college running should be seen as part of a long term athlete development process. Of course at most schools short-term gains like winning national titles is often the metric for "success". (It is even worse in high school to me.)

A coach could focus on just what happens in college and put together training that is great for the short term but potentially detrimental for the long term. An alternative would be recognizing that college is part of the path and training accordingly.

Since 2000, the CU men have won 5 team titles and the women have won it 3 times. Keep in mind Wetmore’s propensity to recruit in state kids. Given all that, I’d say he’s doing a a pretty great job!

Poltergeist wrote:

Correct me if I’m wrong but it looks that the last time CU had a male ncaa champ was 18 years ago.

How does this happen? Why do people say he’s such a good coach…? Very overrated?

The NCAA has gotten a great deal more competitive since the early 2000s. The internet made obtaining good info on training methodology much, much more readily available, and this lead to a dramatic increase in knowledge of training and coaching, which then lead to better times and more depth both at the high school and college level. This is why it took decades for a HS boy to run sub 4:00 again but now we've had numerous HS boys either run under or close to it in the last 15 years.

For the longest time, only a handful of coaches REALLY understood what they were doing, and their success was a positive feedback loop as the handful of top HS athletes would always go to these several programs. With the increase in knowledge, there were more potentially "top" programs, and with the increased amount of depth also, this spread the talent out to a tremendous degree compared to 25 years ago. You can be a great coach, have great talent on the team, and still end up 4th at NCAAs through little more than luck of the draw on how your team performed that specific day on that course. Sometimes we have teams that are truly dominant, but most years all of the top 5 teams or so are great teams with great talent.

I do think CU is perhaps not what it used to be, but I wouldn't really blame Wetmore for that. Pretty hard to argue with the results he's had over his career. Living and training at altitude year round comes with its pros and cons. Especially with shorter distance events (5000m and below), it is impossible to train optimally at 6000ft for a sea level race. You just cannot get enough time spent at race pace up there, and running economy suffers.

Great coach and very nice person. Good luck Sage at the Olympic Trials. Congrats Degenero on some huge 1500m PBs and 6th at NCAA this year.