Ohio collegiate distance programs

Nick and Leigh are working very hard with their distance kids at Ashland. The team is obvioulsy priority 1 (as it should be). To answer your question, YES. They both ran terrible at Gate River and Nick ran even worse in NY this weekend. These are 2 very talented athletes that are now focused on coaching. Please don't try to turn my words around. Leigh was a former NCAA 10k champ that isn't close to that kind of shape. Nick has run faster for 8k cross-country than he ran on the roads in New York. These are 2 very talented (Olympic level) athletes if they weren't so focused on their athletes. Give them credit for helping others reach their goals and sacrifice some of their own.

Ashland is hardly "horrible" in the distances. True, they may not have any NCAA qualifiers this year, but they are a young team. Nick and Leigh are great coaches and even better people. They are talented and hard working, and I am certain that they can return AU to it's glory days of the mid to late '90's.

To clarify,

Leigh and I are coaches first. Everything we have done is with the Ashland runners in mind first. Our goal is to have a national caliber team and to get there you have to make sure everyone is on board with that same type of thinking. Taking over a program and making those changes don't happen over night but I can say now that they all believe.

We are both still training in the early morning in attempts to improve our running. Our running works around the teams running. We decided last minute that we would run the 15k and 8k champs because we didn't have any college meets and spring break was during that time. There have been several times that we had opportunities to compete across the country and World (Leigh turned down 2 world teams) but we opted out as it would interfere with our kids. They know they are first priority.

Leigh and I do not see ourselves as Olympic level athletes. We are just two people who love to run who have had different successes/failures in the past, that want to see how far we can go.

We will continue to race when it doesn't interfere with our kids racing and training. Our team will continue to work towards reaching higher levels of competition.

If you have any questions or comments, positive or negative, email me at runcordes at hotmail.com

please read my first statement. I have nothing to contribute or take away from Leigh and Nick in terms of their coaching world. I wasn't commenting on their coaching or anything else for that matter.

But to be "retired" means you don't compete anymore. So, if you are travelling hundreds of miles to run in races, you are not "retired". You are still trying to accomplish something in the sport - so they are not retired from competition. And, they are probably not satisfied with their results in these past two races, but from my end of things, I think they both are doing very well, they are still among the top.

legally blond wrote:

I have nothing to contribute or take away from Leigh and Nick in terms of their coaching world. I wasn't commenting on their coaching or anything else for that matter.

That is where we differ. I was commenting on their coaching. I think they are doing a terrific job and they have their priorities straight.

Untrueisms wrote:

That is where we differ. I was commenting on their coaching. I think they are doing a terrific job and they have their priorities straight.

I was more or less correcting your incorrect statement that they were retired from running the road circuit. I think Nick makes it quite clear he and Leigh are still competing. You tried in a weak attempt to connect my statement with their coaching skills and I never commented on their coaching.

Let's just leave it at that.

To quote Untrueisms: "They have retired from being competitive on the road circuit."

They are still allowed to run on the road circuit as long as they are no longer competitive. But how high do they have to finish before Untrueism's trueism is untrue? Therein lies the conundrum.

You are correct. I would even take it a step further. Based upon their talent and ability, they are not racing anywhere near that level. That is in no way a put down. They are racing very well for people that are investing a ton of time to coaching.

They are currently coaches first and athletes second and their performances are suffering because of that. ANYONES WOULD. But for people to say that they are ignoring their coaching responsibilities to run. That is bull shit and you can look to their most recent performances as proof.

Akron and Ohio are about the same i'd say. Akron is way better than BG. Thats not saying much though. I think on paper they have a good shot on actually performing well as a team this year in cc. They just have to prove it seeing how they havent so far.

OMG watch that. Its about the BG track club...how gay..hahahaha

At the rate the MAC is going, the men's teams will duke it out in a club championship. I give the BG and Toledo men props for keeping clubs going.

Actually that BG Track Club video was pretty funny.

Lets face the facts.... Ashland's program isn't going anywhere. Every good DI quality runner will go to a quality program like Ohio state and Miami and with the growth of DIII programs in the state, the rest of the quality athletes are going that route. Right now Ashland is just barely beating DIII programs and they give scholarships. Soon Ashlands running program will stuggle to beat middle of the road DIII programs.

Gary at Ohio State only ecently retired from competitive running and he got the Buckeyes to be competitive in the Big 10 and have some NCAA studs as well. It'd be a heck of a lot easier at Ashland getting guys to be competitive at D3. Why don't people thing Nick will get it done?

Dude Ashland is DII.

Nick can and will get it done and Coach Logan realizes that. The program had similar lulls (as most programs do outside of Gunnison and Alamosa) when Coach Gallagher was there yet he had built up such a reputation that people cut him some slack during those periods.

The challenge at Ashland is that yes, they do give money, but they are a private school and as such as very costly without the level of endowment that a DIII school would have. So it's tough to entice athletes there strictly by financial means.

Wisconsin is a lot better both at D1 and D3 than Ohio.

Badgers, UW-Oshkosh, LaCrosse, etc. makes Ohio State and all those wannabe D3 schools in the OAC look weak.

And all the DIII schools in Wisconsin are public schools with realtively low cost so I would hope they could be good at athletics. UW-Madison is obviously in a strong stretch at this point, but Ohio State will continue to improve in both CC and track and field (on the men's side-women will probably continue the downhill slide).

But, the thread IS entitled Ohio Collegiate Distance programs, so back to the topic.

You can't even fairly compare the Wisconsin D3 schools to the Ohio ones. The only thing they have in common is that they don't give athletic scholarships.

Yes, Wisconsin DIII schools are better than Ohio's, but they beat every state in that category. As for DI, Wisconsin is definitely one of the best teams in the nation, so once again they beat out Ohio State but also every other school in the nation outright except 2-3.