Why no love for the Wake Forest return to success?

Dead on....no love for a program on the rise. Going to be top 5 next year, mark my words young'un!

Probably cause letsrun hates when a team uses international students

Bump, I’m guessing because they have a team of lesser known recruits and international runners. So it takes a while for us to pick up on a program like that. Also they haven’t seen consistent track success yet. I feel like Tulsa is in this same kind of category as well.

True but only 3 out of their 7 runners at nationals were foreign. I feel like that’s pretty standard for top teams.

The reality is that Wake Forest has perhaps the smallest alumni / fan base in the ACC. Thus lower revenue for Athletics. They fill their 30,000 seat football stadium only when they play UNC, NC State, or Notre Dame. Wake Forest just had to mortgage the farm to keep their football coach who is having success. Plus it is the ACC - if you are not winning in basketball then you have problems. Wake's greatest sports alum? Arnold Palmer.

I noticed and gave them some love by interviewing Hayes at the meet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPY0SMKiykI

The LRC wingnuts probably read it WOKE Forest and immediately tune out.

BYU should be the most loved team here.

Coach Hayes took a team that was the very bottom of the ACC to a top 10 team nationally. Amazing job.

Other ACC schools have “ name “ coaches, but he beat almost all of them.

The guy can flat out coach.

Much props to him.

I find it a little silly when people talk about teams and individuals not getting “love” or attention, as if running is widely talked about in media outside of small websites and podcasts like letsrun or stride report when it was a thing. Also it’s not like they’ve been good for very long and teams get more respect when they have continued success. No disrespect to WF though, 10th at NCAAs is great

sussy baka wrote:

I find it a little silly when people talk about teams and individuals not getting “love” or attention, as if running is widely talked about in media outside of small websites and podcasts like letsrun or stride report when it was a thing. Also it’s not like they’ve been good for very long and teams get more respect when they have continued success. No disrespect to WF though, 10th at NCAAs is great

Agree.

Love by whom? What exactly do you expect to see, multiple threads about a school earning 10th place at NCAAs?

Bicurious wrote:

They turn the tables on the southeast region, winning the southeast region over the ACC powers (minus ND) and beat Vin and Milt, then turn around and translate that in to a top 10 finish at NCAAs.

Wake Forest XC and Football are having similar seasons. Where is the love for Hayes? Does anyone understand how much easier Vin and Milt have it at their respective schools?

Not undermining how much coaching it takes to accomplish this, it's been a very impressive turnaround. But when you have several distance coaches on staff, make poor Gray Horn have to coach everything else, and trot out a distance team on more scholarship money than 90% of other colleges even have across their entire track roster of all event groups, you're bound to be successful.

Once again, to reiterate, it's not simply "that easy". Then again, when you're a Power 5 school in a nice location with good academics, and you can offer a full ride to just about anyone you want, you're bound to hit on a handful of them. I don't hate the players at all, it's exactly what any school should do when they know they can't be competitive as a full track and field program. Find your niche and become one of the best at it. I just am not a fan of watching XC NCAAs, seeing 30 teams there, and only maybe a half dozen of them are at all relevant in track and field.

We're at a point where the great majority of programs have to be willing to invest 6-10 scholarships into a cross country roster to be competitive at NCAAs, whereas a traditional healthy track and field program would have maybe 3-4 invested into XC runners. I'm heavily in favor of limiting an XC roster for each year to 5 scholarships. If you can't find a way to win with 5 full ride athletes, or 10 half scholarship athletes, or 3 full ride and 4 half ride, etc., you're just not a good coach. Some of those Power 5 coaches with good track teams still manage to put together top-15 and even top-10 finishes at NCAAs with maybe 2.5-3.5 scholarships, but no amount of coaching can overcome another program trotting out rosters with 2, 3, 4 times the amount of scholarships than they have.

So, to address the original post, Hayes has done an awesome job bringing in high level runners and getting high level performances out of them. That's way harder than people realize. Then again, it's hard to imagine having that setup and failing to be relevant nationally in XC. So props to him, but also it's probably to be expected.

Old Big East wrote:

Wake's greatest sports alum? Arnold Palmer.

An argument could also be made for Tim Duncan.

A much weaker argument could also be made for Hunter Kemper.

The Narwhal wrote:

Old Big East wrote:

Wake's greatest sports alum? Arnold Palmer.

An argument could also be made for Tim Duncan.

A much weaker argument could also be made for Hunter Kemper.

or Chris Paul.

or Brian Piccolo, the namesake of the movie Brian's Song.

The mistake in 'Brian's Song'? - when he asks if you can teach yourself to be a kicker. He was a kicker at Wake Forest in addition to being a running back, thus lead the nation in scoring.