i feel like longer rosters and wide investment in athletes are more in the spirit of d3. particularly with expensive schools. and with some conference meets letting you run unlimited. personally i am like, buy a bunch of lottery tickets and see what happens -- southlake carroll. and if you notice wartburg at conference has the good kids but also ones running over 30. and everywhere in between. the difference between them and the next team is how many net out well. which i agree, is coaching and training and maybe somewhat recruiting at this point.
i find it telling in XC that pomona and wartburg are near top with loosey goosey rosters while snooty roster limits NYU, williams, and hopkins chase. do i really believe the latter schools have less money? NYU does UAA where every conference game might be a plane trip like a d1.
re the southlake carroll parallel -- maybe the folks pointing out the tight cluster have a point. teams like this tend to be more "sheer numbers." if you notice, wartburg is far worse at indoor track and merely good outdoors.
and that is where it might show up that a snooty program literally recruits that super fast kid who should be d1. invests heavily. but one kid doesn't win you cross TEAM titles.
this always struck me as a basic tension in how many XC teams, at all levels, are set up. i think getting those 1-2 great kids is good for track. which is an outright footrace. i think teams that more widely invest can prosper in cross where you carry 10 to do the same thing to postseason, and lean on the top 5 to advance and win, and who is in that top 5 can change week to week. in which case unlike my college track coach you can't throw all your ante on a small handful of people you think might win you their event.
Typically true, although most schools will only take a limited number of athletes to any meet involving significant travel. This is much more relevant if you're in a conference with a lot of far away meets, such as the UAA, than a conference that has a smaller geographical area.
Wartburg College has 18 men under 15:00 in the 5k this outdoor season. Add in 3 other guys from indoor season and they're looking at 21 in total this season. They have more guys under 15 in the 5k than some teams even have people on their roster. Incredible depth and most likely incredible coaching as many of these athletes were not high school superstars.
How do they have so many on the roster? a lot of D3 teams could do that if they had unlimited roster spots
Do you realize how hard it is to even recruit that many athletes? Especially to a non-academically elite school in bufu Iowa. Idk if you have ever coached before, but making training plans is a heck of a lot easier than recruiting and the other operational aspects of running a program.
Wartburg College has 18 men under 15:00 in the 5k this outdoor season. Add in 3 other guys from indoor season and they're looking at 21 in total this season. They have more guys under 15 in the 5k than some teams even have people on their roster. Incredible depth and most likely incredible coaching as many of these athletes were not high school superstars.
I just looked them up on tfrrs and counted 19. But their median time (for those under 15) is 14:46.92. I don't think this is that noteworthy at all - if all you do is run and don't have any academic workload hindering you this progression should almost be expected, and sub 15 means nothing any more, even at the d3 level. Their roster size is also huge.
Looking at their 1, 10, and 19 runner:
1: 4:41 / 16:15 HS PR's
10: 17:03
19: 4:24 / 10:03 / 16:29
Yes, they have much more very low-end depth than Stanford or NAU (the first 2 schools that came to mind), but nowhere near the quality of front runners, or even mid / mid-back.
Specializing in average. That's why they go where they go.
Academics is most important, and they get to run with a 'club' of like minded, like talented runners. A great college experience. Well done them..
For you joggers, 15 minutes is not special. Its over a minute behind a lot of women
I recall one Williams guy at 15:15 back in the day. There was an 8:58 steepler who also ran 3:56 and would have run sub-15 but didn't run the 5. I don't recall any sub-15 guys. So, this is noteworthy, not only by far the best D3 depth right now at Wartburg, but also each of those guys is a level above the vast majority of D3 runners in the 1990s.
You can set the tfrrs.org outdoor qualifying list to the top 500 D1 men, going from 13:22 down to 14:43, and I don't think you'll come anywhere near to 18 guys on one team. Stanford has five. I checked the usual suspects and found very few. It's still early outdoors and you'd think that a place like Wisconsin would have ten sub-15s only on their club team, but I am just not finding very many for any D1 school on the roster.