Sub 4:15/9:15 Ivy Guys

MAKid wrote:

Ben True has run 4:02 in the mile

Ben True has also run 3:59.99 in the mile and 3:40.18 in the 1,500.

Columbia seems to have the least HS talent on their team, but they did some pretty impressive things this year. Maybe next year they'll be the team to make it. Harvard also has the potential in jarret, gillepsie, chenoweth and a I think they landed one or two good recruits this year. If not next year, they should be a solid team in the next season.

I agree about Columbia. They have the least amount of guys on that list yet had their top 7 guys in the top 15 and their 8th guy beat Princeton's 5th. Not to mention what they do with their 800 / 1500m guys. They had 5 of the top 10 800m guys last year and three guys made the finals of the 1500m.

Columbia recruits just as solidly as the other schools. There are plenty of people missing on that list from several of the schools.

What other guys does Columbia have. Looked over their roster. They don't seem to.

Columbia goes the route of recruiting vast numbers of guys. 80% of their track roster is middle distance and up guys. They do have 7 sub-9:20 recruits on their current roster (including a 9:04 and a 9:06), 5 more at 9:23 to 9:27 and at least 2 other 4:18 types. That's about 5 seconds per mile per man slower than Princeton's 15 best recruits and behind Harvard and Dartmouth through the top few, but not bad at all. They have more depth around the 6th-20th recruits than any other team in the league except Princeton. Still, the fact that Columbia almost upset Princeton this year should be embarrassing to about 2/3 of Princeton's recruits who quite frankly aren't reaching their potential.

Don't forget Stanford can give scholarship $$$ and the Ivy schools can not.

Yes, Stanford has scholarship money, a redshirt year, lower athlete academic standards and better weather than the Ivies. Also, Stanford is a competitive Pac 10 university, where much emphasis is placed on the performance of its athletes, who are treated like royalty. On the other hand, the Ivies make an effort to integrate their athletes, who are all non-contract volunteers, into the general student body, and athlete status is generally not considered to be prestigious by the balance of the student body - rather, they are often looked down upon because they are perceived to have been admitted only because of their athletic and not academic, prowess (even though this is not an accurate assumption in most cases).

I took a look at the last few years to see if there were any teams that stood out as consistently improving significantly from their high school teams to be a top 20-25 team at nationals.

William and Mary stood out as one school that develops talent well (though Christo Landry was their leader for much of this period and was a stud in high school). Portland has done a nice job with some 4:13-15/9:10-15 types, but that is still more talent than most of the Ivy League (save Princeton). Ok State has developed some of their 3-7 guys well over the years, but they still have more talent than the Ivy's (pre-Kenyans and Fernandez/Lowe)

The only specific instance of teams achieving solid results without many high school superstars was the '06 Michigan State team, who finished 17th. This may have been a situation where everything went right at the same time (or maybe Drenth is just great at developing that kind of talent), because these guys were mostly borderline D1 runners in high school

Justin Zanotti- 9:35? (though 3rd in the state in cross)

Matt Bartlebaugh- 9:58?

Stephan Shay-9:22

Adam Sprangel-4:27/9:38

Dustin Voss-4:11/9:11 (state cross champ w/fastest time of the day)

Nick Katsefaras-9:19

David Bills-4:19 (state cross champ)

Haroldo wrote:

Yes, Stanford has scholarship money, a redshirt year, lower athlete academic standards and better weather than the Ivies. Also, Stanford is a competitive Pac 10 university, where much emphasis is placed on the performance of its athletes, who are treated like royalty. On the other hand, the Ivies make an effort to integrate their athletes, who are all non-contract volunteers, into the general student body, and athlete status is generally not considered to be prestigious by the balance of the student body - rather, they are often looked down upon because they are perceived to have been admitted only because of their athletic and not academic, prowess (even though this is not an accurate assumption in most cases).

At Ivy League schools, the goal is to win the Heps. At Stanford, the goal is (or was for a long time) to win nationals. That difference in attitude translates to a big difference in the programs.

this has been one of the better threads in a LONG time. thanks to the guys doing great research and contributing so much THOUGHTFUL discussion.

Wow, *great* analysis--thanks for all the work that must have involved!

Two BYU guys are in that list, but (as noted) they're both "aged" seniors, and demonstrate nicely the development that Ivy guys might be capable of if the fifth year were an option.

Two Ivy men are on there, Randall and Hine. Randall (a Dartmouth senior, IIRC) may be a (True-like) ski-and-run guy; as you say, hard to know what his HS track fitness really was.

Hine, the Cornell junior, may be a candidate for "most progress" honors, but he helped himself in the NCAA race by running almost identical 5k splits (he passed 60+ guys in the second half of the race, and no one who had a slower split at 5k passed him)--a physiologically efficient, but mentally very very tough, way to race.

Gonia, by the way, was Cal Community College 5k/10k champ for Mesa CC and ran ~29:45/10k during the summer before moving to Poly. I, too, couldn't find any HS marks better than ~1:59/4:25/9:25 for Dan, but those may have been from his junior year...

Ok I hear what a lot of you are saying and I don't disagree that the Ivy's have some extra things to deal with but some of you seem to think it's impossible for them to compete nationally. But if that's the case how do you explain Dartmouth in the 80's when Vin was coaching there? They were top ten at NCAA's a half dozen times or so and had back to back runner-up finishes.

nj wrote:

Ok I hear what a lot of you are saying and I don't disagree that the Ivy's have some extra things to deal with but some of you seem to think it's impossible for them to compete nationally. But if that's the case how do you explain Dartmouth in the 80's when Vin was coaching there? They were top ten at NCAA's a half dozen times or so and had back to back runner-up finishes.

... or the Princeton women's team. They have to put up with all the stuff the mens teams do.

upenn has jdubs