Between the schools of Weber & BYU why does there seem to be so many great SC runners?
Between the schools of Weber & BYU why does there seem to be so many great SC runners?
30 Year olds athletes and been coahcing their for 100 years!
Texas, Arkansas, and Ohio State are more impressive.
coaching.
mormons know how to fly
Interesting definition of "great."
yeah, between the two of them, the american collegiate record-holder and more all-americans than i can count with my fingers and toes. what a terrible definition of "great."
i'm pretty sure mark croghan is the american collegiate record holder and brian olinger is the second fastest american collegiate ever. not that byu and weber don't produce great steeplers, but i just wanted to clear that up...
try farley gerber, weber state, 1984. there's always the debate about where to cut off collegiate records. croghan's was in july, in a european race, and after his eligibility was up. i don't count that and neither do "bibles" like track and field news. seems a bit silly to be still calling him a collegian at that point. gerber was still clearly a collegian competing in a collegiate race.
Olinger ran 8:19 this past summer and has another year left. What did Farley run? OSU has had Croghan, Gary, Conner, and now Olinger. That is a pretty nasty group!
chuck d wrote:
try farley gerber, weber state, 1984. there's always the debate about where to cut off collegiate records. croghan's was in july, in a european race, and after his eligibility was up. i don't count that and neither do "bibles" like track and field news. seems a bit silly to be still calling him a collegian at that point. gerber was still clearly a collegian competing in a collegiate race.
Why? Track and Field News includes high school times the Summer after they graduate. Why not the same for the collegiates?
"Olinger ran 8:19 this past summer and has another year left. What did Farley run?"
Olinger ran 8:19 as a 22 year old college junior. He'll be 23 in June.
8:19.27. so close, eh? OSU - obviously in part due to gary - has become a very good school for prospective chasers.
Ricky Pittman ran 8:23 as true freshman at the University of Tennessee-Olympian.
Doug Brown former U.S steeple record holder 3 time Olympic steepchaser and Olympic team captain from...UT. Ron Addison 8:29 and Sam James 8:29 both while at UT. Tony Cosey 2000 Olympian Steeple UT 8:21. Famigaletti 2002 U.S champ 3 time U.S runner up (official U.S National Championships steeple pace setter) 2004 Olympian steeple also from UT.
Tennessee seems to produce more Olympic steeplechasers than anywhere else.
StatRus,
re: TFN's distinction. i imagine it has to do with the fact that most high schoolers do not get the chance to meet the best high schoolers in the country until post-season races, like golden west. collegiates, on the other hand, do get that opportunity - often multiple times in a season. thus, they get the chance to run very fast against other very fast collegiate competition in season while high schoolers usually do not. of course, with high schooler's like rupp now going over to europe, this makes such a distinction less persuasive nowadays - if it ever was that persuasive. it's obviously an arbitrary line to draw. i think one could also argue that the jump between high school and college isn't quite the same as from college to professional. the "high schooler" is still restricted by quite a lot of rules (i.e., they don't really get the benefit of being a collegiate until they get on campus in the fall so their status isn't all that different from what it was before) while the "collegiate" is not restricted by similar rules and obviously gains the advantage of being a professional.
chuck d wrote:
yeah, between the two of them, the american collegiate record-holder and more all-americans than i can count with my fingers and toes. what a terrible definition of "great."
I absolutely agree and am glad that you see things the same way, being the best (or close to it) among US collegians doesn't equal greatness.
the real UT wrote:
Ricky Pittman ran 8:23 as true freshman at the University of Tennessee-Olympian.
Tough, but not an Olympian.
TFN switched the way they count collegiate records about ten or fifteen years or so ago, now only counting marks made during the collegiate season. Nothing counts after NCAAs. They actually went back and pulled out all the times from the summer months--they were no longer records.
I've always hated this--Quincy Watt's 92 olympic performance is not the collegiate record? Instead, the "record" is a much slower performance that Watts ran in June of the same year. Why the hell is that? If you want to say he graduated already, fine, then it should be Steve Lewis's 88 olympic performance--he was a 19 year old sophomore-to-be.
Earl Jones and John Marshall ran 1:43 at the Olympic Trials as college runners, and Ereng must have run faster than that in winning the gold medal, but Julius Achon has the collegiate "record" at 1:44.5. Stupid.
When I look at the collegiate records, I want to know who the fastest college runners of all time were, not who was the fastest in the month of May.
not tough
Badass.
the real UT wrote:
Ricky Pittman ran 8:23 as true freshman at the University of Tennessee-Olympian.
Doug Brown former U.S steeple record holder 3 time Olympic steepchaser and Olympic team captain from...UT. Ron Addison 8:29 and Sam James 8:29 both while at UT. Tony Cosey 2000 Olympian Steeple UT 8:21. Famigaletti 2002 U.S champ 3 time U.S runner up (official U.S National Championships steeple pace setter) 2004 Olympian steeple also from UT.
Tennessee seems to produce more Olympic steeplechasers than anywhere else.
Where to begin? Pitman ran 8:23.66 in 1983 as a 21 1/2 year old college junior. Kosey ran 8:21 4 as a 25 year-old, 4 years after graduation.
Other than that, they have produced some very good steeplers.
This is a very good topic. There a defintitely schools that have a tradition of great steeplers. I think its by design. And they put their top talents into the event.
How many schools would take a Robert Gary, an 8:54 3200 runner in HS, and take the time and effort to coach him in an event that is usually weak at the conference level?
Same with Tennesee-Ricky Pittman was an 8:46 guy. 97 percent of any college program wouldn't have considered throwing him into the event when he could have scored more points for them in the 5 and 10 double.
There were precedents at those programs, Watts at Tennessee, Croghan(who was an assistant coach for Gary) that had expertise and knowledge of the event. For most coaches the steeple is a pain to coach. My coach stayed with those guys 2 hours longer than the rest of us nearly every day with drills and video. Not every college coach puts forth that extra effort.
As far as Hislop, the godfather of the steeple, he hasn't much choice. He can't get the footlocker top 5 so he took lower profile recruits and focused on a less competitive event.
Don't get me wrong. The steeple isn't an event that every 8:50 hs runner can be expected to dominate better than a flat race due to lack of depth. Flexibility, short speed, and leg power is important. A guy with a soccer background like Robert Gary is probably a really good indication of steeplechase potential. Couldn't see a Salazar doing well in that event. It takes a different breed of distance runner.
But I suppose my whole point is, there a a few programs that have the tradition, expertise, and perhaps the lack of overall talent that drives them to put a focus on the event. Other programs could do the same but don't have the drive at the top or desire to put the extra work in one event.