Biggest Disappointments of the NCAA meet

The championship season should remind us that future performance is not necessarily an extension of the past, regardless of the (incessant) hype. Maturing bodies, new living environments/adjustments, daily competition that may not have existed before, changing motivation/ambition, injuries, and so on — welcome to your new world.

Mrs. Cup wrote:

Tuohy. Best high school Xc runner of all time. Looks good but not on track to win any championships or be a pro.

Teare. What the heck?

Nuguse. Guy could have been an Olympian had it not been for injury. He is now just a good NCAA runner.

Young. Similar to Tuohy.

Notre Dame Men. This team just had to run a solid race in order to finish top 3.

Dudek. National Champ in high school but hasn't a had a good NCAA meet.

Liking. Big 10 champ got worse at regionals and even worse at nationals.

Rodriguez. Guy has never gotten back to freshman form.

liking is too young and didn’t adjust to 10k yet. succeeded at 8k thisbyear and as he ages will get better at the longer distance.

Mrs. Cup wrote:

Tuohy. Best high school Xc runner of all time. Looks good but not on track to win any championships or be a pro.

Teare. What the heck?

Nuguse. Guy could have been an Olympian had it not been for injury. He is now just a good NCAA runner.

Young. Similar to Tuohy.

Notre Dame Men. This team just had to run a solid race in order to finish top 3.

Dudek. National Champ in high school but hasn't a had a good NCAA meet.

Liking. Big 10 champ got worse at regionals and even worse at nationals.

Rodriguez. Guy has never gotten back to freshman form.

O'Neill, Gear and Forbes - thought to be top 10 or top 15 and outside AA. Michigan ladies - Vanderlende has gone from low 20s in 2019 to 108, and so far Hart(69th) has not done much for a 9:50s HS 2 miler.

Disagree. This perception is not based in reality. With Tuohy or any top high school female distance runner people need to be patient and to have realistic expectations. Many of them have dealt with injuries (Tuohy had surgery). More fundamentally people need to understand how female distance runners develop. It is not linear and there is always a tricky phase between 18-21 where what matters is staying healthy and to avoid dangerous nutrional habits even if it sacrifices some speed in the short term. No 18-19 year old female distance runner is going to beat top ncaa distance runners in their 20s. The winner and runner up this year were 24. None of the top pro female US distance runners were exactly tearing it up at her age in college. Tuohy had a really nice season and was likely on track to have a top ten finish but for some bad luck falling during the race. As to championships, lets see what the picture is a few years down the line. That's how it works in distance running. Luckily you are not a coach.

I think Young is doing fine.

Disagree. Tuohy fell, still came back to place highly.

It is unrealistic to expect linear performance increases for everyone. I hope they are all focusing on their studies, because that is the most important part of education.

You can't disagree with one person's opinion of who they were most disappointed in. You can list yours but you should go to another thread to discuss positives. Tuohy and Young were my two biggest disappointments of the meet. I expected both to be champs by sophomore year. Coming out f high school, I predicted that both would be top 3 their soph year. Plenty of men and women have won titles as freshmen and certainly as sophomores. I even expected that they would be poised to go pro but I am not sure either will ever make it as a pro now.

A poster is entitled to state that they agree or disagree with another person's opinion. That's their opinion.

Big East Decision Maker wrote:

You can't disagree with one person's opinion of who they were most disappointed in. You can list yours but you should go to another thread to discuss positives. Tuohy and Young were my two biggest disappointments of the meet. I expected both to be champs by sophomore year. Coming out f high school, I predicted that both would be top 3 their soph year. Plenty of men and women have won titles as freshmen and certainly as sophomores. I even expected that they would be poised to go pro but I am not sure either will ever make it as a pro now.

That is odd. Actually, you can disagree. It does not mean one person is right and the other wrong.

I was assistant coach on a team that was on the podium at nationals two times while I was there. I doubt that there are any people who will post on this thread that have a higher level of running or coaching experience than I do. Betting that you have no real experience.

Was.......:)

My only disappointment was the drone footage blocked by trees. Everything else was great! Enjoy yourselves and your time on the team, if you are an athlete. I am glad they had a fall XC season, unlike last year.

Based on all of the doomsday predictions about Touhy from this site that have come to pass, she is my pick to win the title next year. :) That is part of why I am such a big fan. No matter how much the haters hate, she just keeps on being awesome.

LR message board community: Touhy will never be able to handle a close race, much less a sprint to the finish.

Touhy: Sprints her little self right to the line to win her 3rd NXN title.

LR message board community after she shut her junior year track season down early: She is done. Finished. A flash in the pan.

Touhy: Goes on to keep winning and just helped NC State win a national XC title. Still getting faster, and clearly no where near done.

LR community: Touhy's choice to go to NC State is wrong. She could have gone anywhere. Why would she choose to go there?

Touhy: Smiling her a$$ off, happy and running strong in a supportive environment while getting an engineering degree.

LR community: Touhy is not the waif she was when she was 15. She is going to be too heavy to run fast (this thread was so cringeworthy). The lady changes are going to stop her.

Touhy: Running strong at the college level and fit as a fiddle.

I just love this girl.

You are referring to one person. Most of us expected her to go pro out of HS. She has under performed to most of our expectations. Sounds like you are the guy who always puts her down so that she can outperform your expectation. That is a can't lose approach that I applaud you for. Not me. I picked Mantz to win and NAU and NC State. I would have been disappointed if any of them had under performed also. ND really disappointed me though. I picked them for 2nd.

She was the best finisher in her class. Only people that beat her were older.

As some of the posts above suggest, the biggest component of ‘disappointment’ is often our uninformed or unrealistic expectations.

Completely disagree about Tuohy and Young, I thought they both had good showings (especially Tuohy, top finisher of her class even with a fall!). I don't buy the idea that just because you set high school records, anything short of winning multiple individual national championships in NCAA competition your first two years means you are underperforming. She's already a multiple time All-American as an underclassman while dealing with an injury and growing into a clearly stronger and more resilient adult body. That girl is a superstar in my book. Similar story for Niko, plus both runners were possibly being conservative to ensure they didn't blow up and cost their team points. It is a team sport after all, and it's hard to call members of national championship winning teams a disappointment.

Teare is probably the obvious choice, and while I think it was either stupid for him to force himself to finish or some bad acting, respect to him for going for the win and leaving it all on the course like he said he would pre-race ("if I'm crawling across the line, I did something right..."). Hope to see him win a few titles indoors as I can't see that being the end of his career at OU.

Also in general was not too impressed with the SEC's showing. I would have guessed to see some better individual placings as I thought they might have a benefit weather wise.

I guess I don't see any of these as uninformed or unrealistic. How about addressing the eight of them to educate us about how most are off. If you can show that 6 of the 8 are due to uneducated or unrealistic expectations, you get a gold star.

Tuohy. Best high school Xc runner of all time. Looks good but not on track to win any championships or be a pro.

Teare. What the heck?

Nuguse. Guy could have been an Olympian had it not been for injury. He is now just a good NCAA runner.

Young. Similar to Tuohy.

Notre Dame Men. This team just had to run a solid race in order to finish top 3.

Dudek. National Champ in high school but hasn't a had a good NCAA meet.

Liking. Big 10 champ got worse at regionals and even worse at nationals.

Rodriguez. Guy has never gotten back to freshman form.

Mrs. Cup wrote:

I was assistant coach ….

Is that like being assistant to the regional manager?