2021 Women's XC Thread!!! Predictions Analysis highlights Championship anticipation!!! N.C State vs BYU vs suprise???

This year and maybe a couple more will be kind of weird in regards to the age of athletes at the NCAA level. It could be very easy to have a lot of 24 year olds running if they took a "Covid" year and a "redshirt" year. However, unless you are getting a full ride athletic scholarship why would you stick around? If I'm just getting a half scholarship why would I want to spend thousands of dollars just to run XC and indoor/outdoor track? Doesn't make financial sense unless I have already started a master's degree program.

not exactly on topic, but related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txXOvBegeeY

Dug a little more into the teams, and ahead of the first coaches polls rankings coming out soon I see:

1) BYU - stronger Orton + some improvement across the board - returning champs get the nod

2) NC State - if Tuohy and Clairemonte are stronger and they get a strong 5th out of Shaw/Starliper/Rauber/Quarzo or whoever could be right there with BYU. Assumes Steelman and Chmiel remain strong.

3) Arkansas - a team of Gear, Jolly (nee Morris), Thorvaldson, Hyde and Gray (if she returns) is pretty solid without the Indoor meet just prior

4) Stanford - Heymach and Dudek could be strong 1-2, and Lawson. Jenks, Aragon may improve but still look out of top 3.

5) New Mexico - assumes returners run better than they did in March. If there are strong transferees could move up. Will see at Joe Piane early Oct vs some strong competition.

6) N Carolina - if freshmen Brown and Masciarelli run well they should move up a lot from last year.

7) Michigan State - demonstrated last year they are solid if not great. Could be a little higher but probably not in top 4. Magness placed high at 5,000 Outdoors.

Colorado and NAU have an early season meet at Ok State, and later at Pre Nats so I will wait and see on them. Michigan seems to be avoiding all of the big meets for whatever reason..

Very reasonable. My opinion is that NC State will be lower based on track record of their coach.

This thread was hijacked by the disgruntled Dudek fan. He always makes Crazy predictions

He went on and on about how Dudek was going to win or finish top 10 and she finished 156. He kept saying that because she almost beat Cali Logue... logue finished 125th. Even Haley Hedberg who beat them both by big margin was like 55th. Clear that all those girls that were running in those meets were not running against the best competition and also Peak too soon.

Now he's going on and on about how Stanford is going to win.

He also went on and on about how 3 high school girls we're going to obliterate all the records and it was amazing.

And no-one obliterated any records and they all ended up getting injured.

Anyway in reality is no way to tell us so many factors could influence things. But I think NC state will definitely be a little bit stronger. BYU will be strong but I could see them not progressing quite as much since they just won it and a bunch of the runners recently got married.

Sydney thorvaldsens been battling injuries. Dudeck will not be in the top 50, probably not in the top 100. Neither will starliper....

More like it was hijacked by some people taking the opportunity to insult BYU and religion. Predictions are fun. Insults are not. You are sort of doing it to. Make your predictions. You may be right or you may be wrong. But outlandish predictions shouldn't bother you.

Ezrun wrote:

Prove it! Let's just focus on top 5 to make it easy. BYU has 2 6th year runners, 2 fifth year runners, and fourth-year Runner. Whitney Orton, camp, Bennett, Johnston and middleman. Have to double-check but I think those names are right

For a grand total of 5.25 as their average year. Guarantee of every team that makes the finals they're one of the three oldest

Anyway the point of all of it was just that compared to most teams they are older and more married. But because you want to live in a fairy tale world where everything fits your fantasies, you ran wild with that and assumed it was some great insult instead of just a funny narrative

Re: funny narrative. Let's say it was of interest. I think our Mormon brothers and sisters on this site may be sensitive to this age issue as the BYU men's team is regularly attacked, admonished, berated, etc. for using their entire eligibility.

Ezrun has shown that he is prejudiced against religious people. He is fine with ranting about religion on a running thread but he is not okay with others expressing their opinions about the actual topic of the thread.

Solid analysis. Couple comments…Mich St roster isn’t posted but I think they lose 2 of their big 3. Minnesota has everyone back with a veteran team so they belong in the podium conversation. North Carolina seems like they are a year away from 6th to me.

iowakidscanrun wrote:

Mich St roster isn’t posted but I think they lose 2 of their big 3.

One of those three, Johnson, appears to be a grad-transfer on Colorado's roster.

Cor wrote:

iowakidscanrun wrote:

Mich St roster isn’t posted but I think they lose 2 of their big 3.

One of those three, Johnson, appears to be a grad-transfer on Colorado's roster.

Based on this and history Colorado belongs in the team podium discussion. They are almost always in the mix.

iowakidscanrun wrote:

Solid analysis. Couple comments…Mich St roster isn’t posted but I think they lose 2 of their big 3. Minnesota has everyone back with a veteran team so they belong in the podium conversation. North Carolina seems like they are a year away from 6th to me.

Yeah, Minnesota was an oversight on my part, although for podium they will need a bunch to step up, at least I think so. Also Washington if they can fin a solid 4 and 5.

iowakidscanrun wrote:

Cor wrote:

One of those three, Johnson, appears to be a grad-transfer on Colorado's roster.

Based on this and history Colorado belongs in the team podium discussion. They are almost always in the mix.

I agree. Wetmore seems to help a lot of athletes take the next step. Degenero was a 4:20 1500 at Michigan and ran 4:09 this season and could make a big XC step. Johnson seems to be a very aerobic runner and appears a good match for CU's training approach.

I went to HS in Central Ohio when these two were tearing it up.

Dr Foreal wrote:

Ezrun has shown that he is prejudiced against religious people. He is fine with ranting about religion on a running thread but he is not okay with others expressing their opinions about the actual topic of the thread.

Name one thing I said that is prejudiced...

Again if u r making claims about the world and going on missions trying to get others to believe those claims then the merit of them should he evaluated... that is the hallmark of healthy democracy aND human right of free speech...

And speaking of prejudice, what is the position of the majority of religion on gay rights? And on equal rights for women?

I'm not Prejudice at all because I realized that all Homo sapiens are 99.9999 percent similar. And often times there is more genetic diversity within people who look similar then within people who look different. And I understand that melanocytes are a superficial trait that means nothing, similar to hair color or eye color...

But I am critical to certain truth claims about reality any attempt to indoctrinate others into those truth claims

and I didn't say you don't have a right to express yourself I said your track record of making predictions is not so great

Ezrun, none of your comments have anything to do with the original post, but thanks for being so insecure you felt the need to share your enlightened expertise on religion.

We’ll all wait for your next bigoted, non-topic related post and roll our eyes.

As an alternative you could stick to posting on running but you probably won’t be able to and we’ll probably see proof of that soon enough.