Jordan Hasay NOT to Stanford (yet)

Allyson turned pro after high school, studied at USC, and trained locally with coaches and athletes with Olympic medals. It paid off handsomely for Allyson. Now Allyson has 1 Olympic Gold, 2 Olympic Silvers, and 4 IAAF Outdoor World Championship Golds. Allyson's most proud achievement however is her USC diploma in Elementary Education. Jordan is one of those rare phenoms who as a prep is far beyond the NCAA level. Jordan would do best for herself by turning pro now.

I agree, best choices for her are;

1. Turn Pro

2. Stanford

3. Quit running get pregnant and have 5 kids before the age of 25. Oh yea, with ME!!

Ha... you honestly believe that an Oregon degree is equivalent to a Stanford degree. That's cute.

When we rank candidates for initial interviews, Oregon is one of the schools that does nothing for the candidate. Stanford is almost a guaranteed interview unless there is something egregious on the resume.

As for UW, we were recruiting for engineering positions last year out of a couple undergrad EE departments from various universities. Our UW candidate did this song and dance about his senior project. Turned out one of our Stanford candidates did a similar project in his first digital design class.

In all my time as a recruiter, I've come to believe that a Stanford degree - and maybe even a Stanford experience - is something that is not replicated anywhere save for maybe Harvard, MIT, Princeton or Yale. I think it would be foolish to pass up the opportunity to attend Stanford for a second-tier academic institution, and not even a second-tier institution with a niche (liberal arts/engineering focused/unique program/etc).

Not to say that she won't, but I think it would be a huge missed opportunity.

tracksam,

don't be hysterical. I'm not hating on USC or UCLA. They are great schools if you are sprinter or jumper. They are horrible for distance runners. Why?

1. nothing but pavement to run on.

2. horrible air quality

3. suspect coaching

4. As for UCLA they have recruited very well in the last 3-4years and have pissed the talent away.

As for the Allyson felix comparison, give me a break. AF was world class her senior year...I mean she was in the top 3 in the world. She ran 22.11 or something like that.An equivilent to a 4 flat 1500 for Jordan. As good as Jordan is, she is a far cry from this level. In fact, she is probably somewhere between the #3-4 runner on the UW XC Team now. She barely beat two anorexic skeletons last weekend so she is hardly dominant even at the HS level.

Keep it real folks.

Jordan today is a HS phenom with the rare killer instinct and times that will progress to Olympic Gold. You can't expect her to get Gold yet until her body develops and her training progresses. She won't be able to to that at UW, UO, or Stanford. The coaches will burn her out for the bonus money received for NCAA championships. The girls there are cute and cuddly but not at her level. Jordan should turn pro like Allyson Felix and get a coach that has already had an athlete win a medal at the Olys or WCs, and train and run races all over the world with Kenyans and Ethiopians she will be running against in London 2012, etc.

I think you misunderstood my post completely...perhaps reading comprehension is a problem with you Wall Street types? I in no way implied that an Oregon education is comparable to one at Stanford, though the Honors Program is well-funded and highly thought of. What a school like Oregon does is emphasize the undergrad experience, unlike many other (hic, "highly rated") universities that achieve their "rating" due to research and grad programs. What I do think is very viable for Hasay is to look at Oregon as an undergrad experience, and then move on to one of the "highly rated" schools for her post grad experiences.

BTW, it is amusing how many Letrun posters are impressed with Hasay's 4.00+ GPA. Get with it folks, in today's world of hyper-inflated grading this is not unique at all. In fact, schools like Stanford will have an entire freshman class of 4.00+ GPA students, and many 4.00+ applicants will qualify, but not be accepted.

In my opinion, Oregon would be an excellent experience for Hasay, with experienced coaching, a long-history of success, and a community that cares about runners (not to mention the NIKE support). Stanford would be a great choice also (just depends on what she wants to emphasize-- studying or running) for the next four years. Washington, to me, seems to fit nowhere near the top for either an undergrad education (unless she wants to socialize in classrooms of several hundred students) or the miserable running environment (yes, I know that the current team was a national champion...but in a program with no history).

What are you talking about? Hasay is not at the level of Schaff, Babcock, Lawrence, Kozinski or Blood right now much less Felix. These girls could have run FL in the mid to upper 16's.

She will have a chance at a normal collge life for a couple of years and still run lights out. She's never had a chance at being a true teammate on equal ground in HS and college running will give her that chance. It doesn't seemed to have hurt Babcock or Kosinski so far. Last I checked both of these girls only ran in 4-5 races this XC season. Hardly a burnout scenario.

The entire state of Oregon produced 0 T/F medals in the last Olympics. Stanford produced 0 T/F medals in the last Olympics. I haven't heard the tally from the state of Washington. California produced 10 of 29 T/F medals in the last Olympics with 9 of those coming from Southern California. Jordan can win a WC medal or London 2012 like the sole U.S. distance medalist Shalane Flanagan did at Beijing 2008. But she has to start now with a true Olympic/WC level coach and GP/GL/WC/Oly running buddies.

Sorry, but we are talking about distance runners in this thread. If you want to talk about Olympic medal winners in the sprints (and the many athletes who transplanted to San Diego to take advantage of the Chula Vista Oly Training Center), we might as well start talking about swimmers, gymnasts or Winter Oly medal winners. So....how many So Cal distance runners won Oly medals? The answer is ZERO. If Hasay wants good, experienced distance training coaching, she needs to be at Oregon, Colorado or Wisconsin

Not at all. One medal for runners from OR CO WISC WA in recent times, Kara Goucher. Meb got the last one for CA and he is from UCLA. Hasay would best turn pro, get her degree at a world reknowned school like USC or UCLA, and buddy up with the many Kenyan and Ethiopian runners in the L.A. area. Skipping the NCAA rat race is the key.

I was just looking up rankings on the top undergraduate schools from http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/national-search/ UW is the 41st school and oregon is 108th. Also UW is the 11th state school. There is a big discrepancy between UO and UW schools. Those other schools on you list are 4th stanford, 21st cal, 25th UCLA and 27th USC. So yes UW is not as high as those but is no where near oregon.

And you probably like the BCS too. USNWR has popularity contests which are east coast biased given that's where USNWR is published. Always consider the source my friend. Surveys and polls are always very limited and biased towards the control group.

The list of medalists are from USATF and they use the USADA registered home address of where the athletes live. So Cal has always been the world center of Track and Field and it's expected that many Olympic T/F medalists will reside in the So Cal area. USC and UCLA are the greatest T/F schools in the world. Mt Sac has the largest relays in the world, larger than Penn, Drake, Texas, and Kansas relays combined. Footlocker is the only High School National Championships in the U.S.

BCS wrote:

And you probably like the BCS too. USNWR has popularity contests which are east coast biased given that's where USNWR is published. Always consider the source my friend. Surveys and polls are always very limited and biased towards the control group.

I did not know that but even if it has an east coast bias wouldn't that mean that all of the west coast schools would be effected. So the comparison between UW and UO would be under the same bias and the comparison would still be good

Any statistician will tell you that "bias" invalidates the creditability of the survey. Those surveys sell magazines though. That's why they all do them. Money Magazine is infamous for pandering to those in need of positive strokes. J.D. Power, owned by the Nearly bankrupt Detroit 3 is infamous for conjuring up a bogus 'initial quality' survey which only rates the car as it comes off the production line, eliminating how well it will do one year, two years, ten years down the road. Surveys are the steroids of advertisers and marketers.

Big One for OR CO WISC WA wrote:

Not at all. One medal for runners from OR CO WISC WA in recent times, Kara Goucher. Meb got the last one for CA and he is from UCLA. Hasay would best turn pro, get her degree at a world reknowned school like USC or UCLA, and buddy up with the many Kenyan and Ethiopian runners in the L.A. area. Skipping the NCAA rat race is the key.

Okay, you're literally the tenth poster with a different handle to use the exact same argument in their posts. That's kind of annoying, so quit using different handles to get the same point across already. How many distance runner medallists are their from the LA area? What are these identities of the so-called Kenyans and Ethiopians that train there? And why are you comparing Hasay to Allyson Felix, who was a sprinter? She was just about world class coming out of high school, Hasay is not quite there yet.

Your posts are repetitive and selective in their facts. For example, many of the medals were won by athletes who used a So Cal address because they did their Oly prep training at Chula Vista. Most, in fact all of the medals were won by other than distance runners. How many So Cal distance runners even made the Olympic team? Also, you keep posting a certain number of medals, giving credit for 4 medals every time a relay team won....why not be honest and use the total number of athletes who won medals, and tell where they attended college. And quit bringing up one very special foreign implant (Meb), who is your only example of a So Cal distance runner. Your argument is shallow and we all see through it.

Your argument for Washington is a joke. Everyone knows that this "top tiered college" popularity poll is a joke. If you read the criterea, you will see that it is highly skewed toward research funds at research universities and advance degree programs---these factors have nothing to do with an 18 year old undergrad who would likely be better served at a university with good undergrad experiences.

You have a minority view and that's all. T/F people know that the states of Oregon and Washington produced zero medals at Beijing this summer and propaganda from those areas now fall on deaf ears. Well, more like we are laughing at your continuing bullshit about distance running when in fact you have nothing to show for it.