I mean hell. You have to look no further then Cumberlands own Instagram to find a post at nats where one of their race walkers is violating the rules.
I'm pro-racewalk but against having people who just cheat beat out those that put in the work to be good at it. Also 4 red cards in 3k to get DQd is laughable.
My previous comment was also just related to facts. If you're getting 20 free points from the walk then invest that heavily in the foreign distance kids you're basically guaranteed to get enough points to win.
As people have said their distance kids didn't improve much the only two really being the Moroccan kid and Santorum. Them along with Bendsen and Madeo had great races at nats the rest of them either straight up bombed or raced below the rankings coming in. They basically had a B- nats and won off their racewalk cushion and bought points
You pretty far off here. In fact, all but Asslouj, who just arrived at Cumberlands mid-January and had four weeks of training with the team and Shevchenko, who hasnt raced and trained much in 2022 and 2023 before coming to Cumberlands (if you dont know why you should watch the news more often) have improved their high school times, most quite significantly.
Santorum: 3:57 1500, 2:27 1000 (outdoor) to 4:01 mile and 2:22 (2h after running 4:06 mile FTW)
Luca Madeo: 8:28/14:48 (outdoor) to 8:23/14:29 indoor
Loser (DNS at nationals with sprained ankle): 8:42 to 8:26
Trost: 1:54 (outdoor) to 2:26 (indoor, converts to 1:52 800)
Vaccari: 8:34/15:20 (outdoor) to 8:24 and 14:44 (indoor)
Bendsen: 8:44 to 8:12
Dennis Kipkirui in fact has never ran a sanctioned race before joining Cumberlands, therefore its hard to judge if his 14:09 (which came off of 4 weeks of training after being out for 4 weeks) was a solid performance or not. Only outdoor can tell. He certainly has not run 13:30 before coming to Cumberlands like some misinformed people on here claim. Dennis Kipkirui in Kenya is about as common of a name as John Smith is in the States.
Its easy to trash Sowder for scoring lots of points with race walkers and internationals (which by the way is open to any program) but you cannot trash him for not getting his athletes to run fast(er).
Disclaimer: I am neither a staff member of Cumberlands nor am I on their roster. I am a fan of the program though.
James everyone knows this is you.
But why lie? This is the same Dennis Kipkurui. His races are going into the same Dennis Kipkurui’s world athletics and it’s a picture of the same person.
Why not even look at Shevchenko’s cross country season? He fell off a cliff since then. He also ran a marathon last year, this seems odd for someone who was hardly training.
Bendsen’s 8:44 came in a National championship race last year where he beat a guy with a PR of 8:09. It seems like this was a tactical race (nobody else was even close to their PR). It most likely wasn’t his PR either, just his only 3k race on world athletics.
Loser ran 14:38 in a 5k as well, it seems like he just didn’t have many races uploaded either which is why his PR was listed so slow. With good coaching I’d expect Loser to run much faster than 8:26. His 5k actually got 9 seconds slower this year.
Trost was a 3:51 1500 guy last year, most of the people who beat him in the 1k had slower 1500 PRs than that.
Vaccari’s PR before coming to Cumberlands was 14:45 NOT 15:20 (again, why lie?). So he improved by one second in the 5k. That 8:34 you mentioned came from 3 years ago and his birth year is listed as 2003, which would mean he would’ve been 17/18 years old at the time of running it. You’d expect more than 8 seconds improvement than that in that time frame ESPECIALLY from someone so young.
You’re cherry picking here. From what I’ve heard Sowder went overseas himself to go recruit these guys. I don’t think he’d be going overseas to recruit guys with PRs of 15:20 or 8:44 when there are plenty of high schoolers who can run that in the US.
If Sowder could actually coach he’d recruit 18 year olds from the US and develop them.
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You don’t think it’s odd that all the hate seems to be aimed towards one school? Maybe it speaks to your team winning in a way that commands no respect.
Sounds like people just need to get better or put together a better national meet if they want to win
An all around dislike for a winning team is nothing new. It’s not like any other team with decent funding can’t recruit internationally, or load up on a specific event group. People need to just move on; it’s outdoor season now.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
I don’t remember seeing this amount of hate towards any team other team for winning. The only team that I’ve seen get any hate at all for winning was Oklahoma City.
I generally hold a lot of these teams who have won in pretty high respect. Dordt being a trophy teams year in and year out in track, and winning in xc with no foreigners and very few grad transfers contributing deserves all the credit in the world.
Same goes to Taylor’s two recent national championships and College of Idaho’s women this year.
Hell, even Milligan winning with only two foreigners this year is pretty acceptable to me.
The only reason Life bothers me at all is the doping allegations, they only really had a few foreigners. I’m not a huge fan of the marathon points either.
But Cumberlands seems to just take advantage of any easy points they can come by. Of course they’re going to get a lack of respect.
Honestly, your last statement @carter sounds a little racist if you ask me. Let me ask you this since your probably the hater making multiple accounts as different names… How is recruiting internationals an easy way out? Please explain how being from a different country other than the United States is any advantage….. how coming from countries of less opportunity and resources as the United States helps Cumberlands win titles. Is it not simply Sowder is just working extremely hard? Why do you have a hard time imagine someone is willing to go above and beyond to win over others who you wish could win? Please give me a real response because if you say this about Cumberlands, you have to say this about NAU, Oklahoma State, etc
Honestly, your last statement @carter sounds a little racist if you ask me. Let me ask you this since your probably the hater making multiple accounts as different names… How is recruiting internationals an easy way out? Please explain how being from a different country other than the United States is any advantage….. how coming from countries of less opportunity and resources as the United States helps Cumberlands win titles. Is it not simply Sowder is just working extremely hard? Why do you have a hard time imagine someone is willing to go above and beyond to win over others who you wish could win? Please give me a real response because if you say this about Cumberlands, you have to say this about NAU, Oklahoma State, etc
NAU and OK State are constricted by the same scholarship rules that every other Division One team is. Cumberlands has multiple amount the times of money that every other school has to give out. Not to mention those schools are not getting points in an event with 60 total athletes in it
Also by your definition Sowder was extremely lazy last year when Cumberlands was mid and all of a sudden found a work ethic?
You pretty far off here. In fact, all but Asslouj, who just arrived at Cumberlands mid-January and had four weeks of training with the team and Shevchenko, who hasnt raced and trained much in 2022 and 2023 before coming to Cumberlands (if you dont know why you should watch the news more often) have improved their high school times, most quite significantly.
Santorum: 3:57 1500, 2:27 1000 (outdoor) to 4:01 mile and 2:22 (2h after running 4:06 mile FTW)
Luca Madeo: 8:28/14:48 (outdoor) to 8:23/14:29 indoor
Loser (DNS at nationals with sprained ankle): 8:42 to 8:26
Trost: 1:54 (outdoor) to 2:26 (indoor, converts to 1:52 800)
Vaccari: 8:34/15:20 (outdoor) to 8:24 and 14:44 (indoor)
Bendsen: 8:44 to 8:12
Dennis Kipkirui in fact has never ran a sanctioned race before joining Cumberlands, therefore its hard to judge if his 14:09 (which came off of 4 weeks of training after being out for 4 weeks) was a solid performance or not. Only outdoor can tell. He certainly has not run 13:30 before coming to Cumberlands like some misinformed people on here claim. Dennis Kipkirui in Kenya is about as common of a name as John Smith is in the States.
Its easy to trash Sowder for scoring lots of points with race walkers and internationals (which by the way is open to any program) but you cannot trash him for not getting his athletes to run fast(er).
Disclaimer: I am neither a staff member of Cumberlands nor am I on their roster. I am a fan of the program though.
James everyone knows this is you.
But why lie? This is the same Dennis Kipkurui. His races are going into the same Dennis Kipkurui’s world athletics and it’s a picture of the same person.
Why not even look at Shevchenko’s cross country season? He fell off a cliff since then. He also ran a marathon last year, this seems odd for someone who was hardly training.
Bendsen’s 8:44 came in a National championship race last year where he beat a guy with a PR of 8:09. It seems like this was a tactical race (nobody else was even close to their PR). It most likely wasn’t his PR either, just his only 3k race on world athletics.
Loser ran 14:38 in a 5k as well, it seems like he just didn’t have many races uploaded either which is why his PR was listed so slow. With good coaching I’d expect Loser to run much faster than 8:26. His 5k actually got 9 seconds slower this year.
Trost was a 3:51 1500 guy last year, most of the people who beat him in the 1k had slower 1500 PRs than that.
Vaccari’s PR before coming to Cumberlands was 14:45 NOT 15:20 (again, why lie?). So he improved by one second in the 5k. That 8:34 you mentioned came from 3 years ago and his birth year is listed as 2003, which would mean he would’ve been 17/18 years old at the time of running it. You’d expect more than 8 seconds improvement than that in that time frame ESPECIALLY from someone so young.
You’re cherry picking here. From what I’ve heard Sowder went overseas himself to go recruit these guys. I don’t think he’d be going overseas to recruit guys with PRs of 15:20 or 8:44 when there are plenty of high schoolers who can run that in the US.
If Sowder could actually coach he’d recruit 18 year olds from the US and develop them.
Most of these kids will also not be there in the fall. The dude is basically running a Junior College. In addition to trying to make up the improvement of these kids, you gotta love the excuse that they picked up Asslouj in December like him doing what he did while not being coached by Sowder for the majority of the year is some example of higher-end coaching.
Can we deny the fact that Santorum is cooking? He put on a mid distance clinic. Before he got to The university of the Cumberlands he didn’t have any noticeable times, guy ran like 15 mid for 5k and your telling me he was just hiding that, he had a notable 1k when he was younger but was not developed till he got to The university of the Cumberlands
Bendson before he got to The university of the Cumberlands was okay at best, maybe even meant to be a role player. During his first cross country season with the team, he ran a 23:37…. Are you kidding me, he just pulled that out of his pocket?
And it’s unfair to say Sowder can’t develop young domestic runners, Yeary set himself as a mid distance talent in the NAIA. for example he barely went sub 2 in high school , ran a 4:47 mile and 17 minutes for 5k. Gets to The University of the Cumberlands and is a core part of the mid distance team, split 1:55 for the 4x8 at nationals, ran 1:22 for 600m, comparable to the guy from Dort. Runs 25:22 for 8k and people still say Sowder can only recruit talent?
Also the 23 avg was on a course that was at least a KM short pretty evident by them coming back and placing 5th two weeks later.
If they have a team that ran a legit 23 on avg it would be a pretty big indicator of terrible coaching as they have all gone backwards from that performance. ( It wasn't because that course was ridiculous). He hasn't ruined the talent I will give him that credit
That course you're referring to with the 8ks was 400m short according to the coach's scoreboard. Outside of that Yeary's best time was 27:28 on one of the fastest courses in the country. Bendsen's best time was 25:18 outside of that conference race, even that was a huge breakout for him as all of his other races were over 26.
Yeary was a 1:59 guy in high school and runs a 1:57 now. Pretty standard improvement by my books. There are multiple guys from Dordt who run the 800 so you might want to clarify who you're talking about.
I find it a bit odd that you're calling people racist for having an issue with Cumberlands recruiting...Aren't the majority of their foreign runners white guys from Europe? I think that the issue most people have with Cumberlands is exactly what they're saying and there's no hidden message or dog whistling. It's the fact they have to recruit all foreigners, no racial motivation. In fact, the only school I can think of that received a similar level of criticism to Cumberlands was Oklahoma City who also added a large amount of European athletes and older runners from the US (I'm not going to ignore that they did have a number of athletes from North/East Africa, but there were a number of white European athletes as well.)
When teams recruit and develop the majority of their roster and maybe add one or two foreigners nobody complains. I've never heard any slander against schools like Westmont for adding Senzo Sokhela or St. Mary for having Emad Bashir-Mohammed, even though those athletes weren't white. Reason being-They were traditional college age students and the rest of the team was recruited from within the US and developed well.
Oklahoma State gets a TON of criticism just look around Letsrun. BYU also gets a ton of criticism for having older athletes. The reason NAU typically doesn't get a ton of criticism is because their team is primarily made up of US guys with a couple foreigners thrown in.
This isn't exclusive to Cumberlands or the NAIA. Letsrun message boards and instagram comment sections are filled with comments saying Dave Smith couldn't out-coach Mike Smith so he had to go recruit 22 year old "freshmen" foreigners to even the playing field.
Sounds like people just need to get better or put together a better national meet if they want to win
An all around dislike for a winning team is nothing new. It’s not like any other team with decent funding can’t recruit internationally, or load up on a specific event group. People need to just move on; it’s outdoor season now.
I think you're failing to understand this. The NAIA has very few teams with decent funding and no rules preventing a team with good funding to abuse it.
I'm on a team that's competitive in the NAIA and if we even just had a few foreigners we wouldn't have enough money to fill out the rest of our team with guys who run a 5:00 mile in high school. And I think we're pretty average in funding.
Even schools like Indiana Wesleyan and Dordt that are towards the higher end of funding couldn't do what Cumberlands does if they wanted.
I won't just blame Sowder the problem is the NAIA's lack of rules preventing it. There have been other versions of Cumberlands before and there probably will be again in the future. You can't deny this ruins the competitive balance.
That course you're referring to with the 8ks was 400m short according to the coach's scoreboard. Outside of that Yeary's best time was 27:28 on one of the fastest courses in the country. Bendsen's best time was 25:18 outside of that conference race, even that was a huge breakout for him as all of his other races were over 26.
Yeary was a 1:59 guy in high school and runs a 1:57 now. Pretty standard improvement by my books. There are multiple guys from Dordt who run the 800 so you might want to clarify who you're talking about.
I find it a bit odd that you're calling people racist for having an issue with Cumberlands recruiting...Aren't the majority of their foreign runners white guys from Europe? I think that the issue most people have with Cumberlands is exactly what they're saying and there's no hidden message or dog whistling. It's the fact they have to recruit all foreigners, no racial motivation. In fact, the only school I can think of that received a similar level of criticism to Cumberlands was Oklahoma City who also added a large amount of European athletes and older runners from the US (I'm not going to ignore that they did have a number of athletes from North/East Africa, but there were a number of white European athletes as well.)
When teams recruit and develop the majority of their roster and maybe add one or two foreigners nobody complains. I've never heard any slander against schools like Westmont for adding Senzo Sokhela or St. Mary for having Emad Bashir-Mohammed, even though those athletes weren't white. Reason being-They were traditional college age students and the rest of the team was recruited from within the US and developed well.
Oklahoma State gets a TON of criticism just look around Letsrun. BYU also gets a ton of criticism for having older athletes. The reason NAU typically doesn't get a ton of criticism is because their team is primarily made up of US guys with a couple foreigners thrown in.
This isn't exclusive to Cumberlands or the NAIA. Letsrun message boards and instagram comment sections are filled with comments saying Dave Smith couldn't out-coach Mike Smith so he had to go recruit 22 year old "freshmen" foreigners to even the playing field.
They also averaged 25:30 at nats. If he's the distance coaching goat for the 23 min average he performed one of the worst peaks in distance running history.
Xc times are stupid to judge in any case. The pure judgement is can you run well when it matters. By the talent that they had, Cumberlands not winning XC is a pretty big bomb when you look back at it. In ITF even they had a lot of kids bomb as well they just had so many dudes that it worked out for them.
Saying a 1:57/4:31 kid is a mid distance threat is an insane take. The A standard is 1:52 and you're going to have to run 1:50 to score
That course you're referring to with the 8ks was 400m short according to the coach's scoreboard. Outside of that Yeary's best time was 27:28 on one of the fastest courses in the country. Bendsen's best time was 25:18 outside of that conference race, even that was a huge breakout for him as all of his other races were over 26.
Yeary was a 1:59 guy in high school and runs a 1:57 now. Pretty standard improvement by my books. There are multiple guys from Dordt who run the 800 so you might want to clarify who you're talking about.
I find it a bit odd that you're calling people racist for having an issue with Cumberlands recruiting...Aren't the majority of their foreign runners white guys from Europe? I think that the issue most people have with Cumberlands is exactly what they're saying and there's no hidden message or dog whistling. It's the fact they have to recruit all foreigners, no racial motivation. In fact, the only school I can think of that received a similar level of criticism to Cumberlands was Oklahoma City who also added a large amount of European athletes and older runners from the US (I'm not going to ignore that they did have a number of athletes from North/East Africa, but there were a number of white European athletes as well.)
When teams recruit and develop the majority of their roster and maybe add one or two foreigners nobody complains. I've never heard any slander against schools like Westmont for adding Senzo Sokhela or St. Mary for having Emad Bashir-Mohammed, even though those athletes weren't white. Reason being-They were traditional college age students and the rest of the team was recruited from within the US and developed well.
Oklahoma State gets a TON of criticism just look around Letsrun. BYU also gets a ton of criticism for having older athletes. The reason NAU typically doesn't get a ton of criticism is because their team is primarily made up of US guys with a couple foreigners thrown in.
This isn't exclusive to Cumberlands or the NAIA. Letsrun message boards and instagram comment sections are filled with comments saying Dave Smith couldn't out-coach Mike Smith so he had to go recruit 22 year old "freshmen" foreigners to even the playing field.
They also averaged 25:30 at nats. If he's the distance coaching goat for the 23 min average he performed one of the worst peaks in distance running history.
Xc times are stupid to judge in any case. The pure judgement is can you run well when it matters. By the talent that they had, Cumberlands not winning XC is a pretty big bomb when you look back at it. In ITF even they had a lot of kids bomb as well they just had so many dudes that it worked out for them.
Saying a 1:57/4:31 kid is a mid distance threat is an insane take. The A standard is 1:52 and you're going to have to run 1:50 to score
On top of that you’re acting like a 1:59 800 runner is a really slow recruit. Most NAIA schools are thrilled to get 1:59 guys
Especially ones who are so underdeveloped that they can only run 4:47 in the mile with 1:59 speed
They also averaged 25:30 at nats. If he's the distance coaching goat for the 23 min average he performed one of the worst peaks in distance running history.
Xc times are stupid to judge in any case. The pure judgement is can you run well when it matters. By the talent that they had, Cumberlands not winning XC is a pretty big bomb when you look back at it. In ITF even they had a lot of kids bomb as well they just had so many dudes that it worked out for them.
Saying a 1:57/4:31 kid is a mid distance threat is an insane take. The A standard is 1:52 and you're going to have to run 1:50 to score
On top of that you’re acting like a 1:59 800 runner is a really slow recruit. Most NAIA schools are thrilled to get 1:59 guys
Especially ones who are so underdeveloped that they can only run 4:47 in the mile with 1:59 speed
From looking at his milesplit.
He made over a min jump in xc his senior year,10 plus second in the mile, 5 in the 800
That's the type of Recruit that gets picked up 10/10 times in the NAIA especially if he's in state. Acting like he was some scrub is actually kind of an insult to him