Congrats to Williams' Aidan Ryan for running fastest DIII 3k time in history - 7:55

GO EPHS!

Bump awesome for him. Hanson’s brooks add him to your watch list

Yessss! Go Ephs:)

('90)

If I remember correctly, Mayer's run was on the oversized Notre Dame track.

D3 needs more love

Go Ephs ('91)!

USTFCCCA updated the all time list, moving Dan Mayer’s mark to an all conditions best:

http://www.ustfccca.org/records-lists/collegiate-all-time-bests?sport=1&div=3&top=25&event=10

Unclear what the “official” record is, most of the top times are from a long time ago. The historians report on the Pomona team site has the old marks, but not where they were run:

https://d2o2figo6ddd0g.cloudfront.net/y/o/wv5ufi4kgezdv8/d3indoortracklist-m.pdf

'99 checking in. Hell yeah Ephs!

Soon Americans will be giving out medals for the fastest 3,000 in each college major.

Let’s be honest though, Williams has always had a very flexible understanding of division 3 athletic recruiting and scholarship criteria. Just sayin…

I feel a NESCAC rumble coming on. (And don't worry, I have no dog in this fight. The most famous team at my NESCAC school was the co-ed streaking team.)

polarbear4 wrote:

Let’s be honest though, Williams has always had a very flexible understanding of division 3 athletic recruiting and scholarship criteria. Just sayin…

Williams was pulling in the distance talent way back. Sure, some of those boys couldn't necessarily read or write, but they had talent. The trouble was they would either pull back on training and run slower than in high school, like our 9:20 guy, or quit. Somehow Pete turned the tide and got those guys to perform big time by the mid-90s, and the rest is history. One year they had a D3 xc champion who had run only 9:40 in high school. What they're doing now, though, has something to do with the far higher quality depth in distance running in this country now, because when D1 has its share of 8:40s and 8:50s guys, and 9:00-9:20 guys are everywhere, good D3 programs are going to get faster guys than they used to.

polarbear4 wrote:

Let’s be honest though, Williams has always had a very flexible understanding of division 3 athletic recruiting and scholarship criteria. Just sayin…

It's a well known fact that D3 schools are able to recruit kids...any academically elite D3 school does this, NESCAC, UAA, the SoCal schools etc. And for scholarship criteria, they don't need to give athletic scholarships, very generous finaid packages mean that you are only paying a lot of money if you're rich and can afford to. Williams just gets good recruits and trains them decently well, they don't have to break any rules to do that.

Here is a profile I came across of him.

https://www.dyestat.com/gprofile.php?mgroup_id=44531&do=news&news_id=632089-Aidan-Ryan-Pursues-His-Love-of-Running-All-The-Way-to-NCAA-Division-3-3-000m-Record

Pete's Puns wrote:

Somehow Pete turned the tide and got those guys to perform big time by the mid-90s, and the rest is history.

I saw that next year will be Pete Farwell’s last as a coach - stepping down in June ‘23. That’ll be the end of an era. Glad that he is finishing strong, it appears.

What a great Div. 3 budget; when you can fly someone across the country for a 3K indoors !?!

Spry Senior wrote:

What a great Div. 3 budget; when you can fly someone across the country for a 3K indoors !?!

I think Williams Endowment is $4.2B vs, $1.3B for Univ of Oregon so they probably have the money:-)

But then again, We don't know if Ryan paid his own way or not.

polarbear4 wrote:

Let’s be honest though, Williams has always had a very flexible understanding of division 3 athletic recruiting and scholarship criteria. Just sayin…

NCAA National All Academic awards came out today and Williams earned team honors with an average GPA of 3.7. And their top 3 (Ryan, Lindgren, Tuohy) all received individual All Academic Honors. Also Williams Lindgren (Who came in 2nd at XC nationals) was named National Academic athlete of the year.

So I don't think Williams is skirting their academic admission requirements when going after their top talent!