Why isn't Cornell better?

Probably not a big deal, but when my high school son and I went to the Cornell athletics web site we could not find any online recruiting form for runners. Most schools we have looked at have very convenient forms available and I'm guessing these might be useful to the coaches to sort of self select athletes that might be interested in their program. There are so many college choices out there - we pretty much crossed Cornell off our list since there are literally dozens of other D1 programs out there with online forms or which have sent him mailings (junior year). Maybe I'm wrong and there is a form, but if there is, it is pretty well hidden.

for the record, cornell didnt get second at XC heps last year, columbia did. cornell was third last year and this year tied for third with dartmouth.

HS Dad wrote:

Probably not a big deal, but when my high school son and I went to the Cornell athletics web site we could not find any online recruiting form for runners. Most schools we have looked at have very convenient forms available and I'm guessing these might be useful to the coaches to sort of self select athletes that might be interested in their program. There are so many college choices out there - we pretty much crossed Cornell off our list since there are literally dozens of other D1 programs out there with online forms or which have sent him mailings (junior year). Maybe I'm wrong and there is a form, but if there is, it is pretty well hidden.

So what, there is no form. This link has all sorts of contacts.

I am not trying to be that typical letsrun jerk but if your kid was willing to fill out some forms why wasn't he willing to send an e-mail or make a phone call?

Thomas

Alum wrote:

He's also not a very experienced coach. His philosophy is not one that will generate immediate results or make middle of the road talent national class. Cornell's freshmen never run well. W

Yeah, we certainly haven't achieved anything with middle level talent since Rojo's been here. This is an extremely informative thread, it's amazing we have so many successful coaches here on letsrun.

Obviously, Rojo was pretty brash when he started this job and didn't understand how hard it is to have a team make nationals every year. That being said, he took our mid distance crew from the bottom of the league and made us dominant. It's just a matter of time before our distance crew follows suit.

Recruiting is 95% of college coaching. You only have 4 years working with an athlete, there's not that much time for development. Rojo does a really good job with what he gets.

It seems like a lot of this thread doesn't have a firm grasp of the recruiting situation in the Ivy League. I'd break it down by list here:

1) Generally, you're limited to people who got a 1300+ SAT (not sure what the equivalent is now with the Writing in there). This cuts the field of runners enormously, especially since the rest of the Ivy League/Stanford etc. is going for exactly the same kids.

2) No athletic scholarships, so anyone who has a 1300+ SAT and is that fast is probably getting a very nice offer from their state school

3) No merit based scholarships, so if they're that smart they're getting offered more money by their state school.

4) The Ivy League dedicates far less money to their athletic programs than larger name schools, which often means they can't have as many people on the team and their facilities are worse. Have you ever seen U-Texas' track?

Ivy schools are mostly recruiting off reputation, which is strong, but their pool of applicants is limited. If a National level squad starts with talent, then the teams are limited.

Also, try making it to NCAAs out of the Northeast. It remains the toughest because Iona/Providence are nationally ranked and there's a lack of great meets in the Northeast to score points. Basically everything rides on the one trip to Pre-Nats that the athletic department will spring for.

Recruits for Ivy schools are kind of a zero-sum game and Princeton is doing a very good job corralling the market.

Let me start off by saying I think my brother has done a great job at Cornell. Way more success on the track than I thought he would have (but less as a team in XC). I think the one thing he didn't appreciate was how important and hard recruiting is. Instead of using it as an excuse I think now his recruiting classes are starting to catch up to what he has done on the track and he can build it into a program that hopefully goes to nationals (something none of the Ivy Leagues schools are doing on the men's side).If you look at the track results, with far less talent on his roster his guys have dominated the league at the Heps the last two or three years. I think that speaks for itself. But they don't give you bonus points for not recruiting as well as the other teams. You are judged how your team finished. Most of us like to view "coaching" as designing workouts but recruiting in college is a huge part of it and now I think Robert is starting to get the best recruiting classes he's ever had.As for the famous interview when he said he would resign if he wasn't going to nationals and winning the league, he did offer his resignation to his boss. His boss loves the job he's doing.Some individual questions.

How many kids are going to go some other school hoping with some promise to transfer to another school? I don't think anyone has every done this on Robert's team.

Most high school kids are unfamiliar with letsrun. Clearly you post on here and know about some weird transfer rule so you have researched Cornell a lot but most high school kids don't know of the website and aren't going to pick a college because of it for sure.

Which still doesn't explain why Cornell should lose recruits to Syracuse and the like.

Conto wrote:

Having said all that, its not like Cornell hasn't done well. They've easily been a top 50 team in the country routinely. Unfortunately, our sport does not reward the top 50. You gotta be a bit better then [sic] that and make Nationals or else you get a thread about how you stink.

Hey illiterate, they haven't performed up to their coach's publicly stated expectation for them. Either the recruits suck or the coaching sucks. Maybe both.

r.t.i. wrote:

Which still doesn't explain why Cornell should lose recruits to Syracuse and the like.

Syracuse can offer full rides to anyone, and its a big-time athletic school without the same academic standards as Cornell. At the end of the day, and Ivy's recruiting comes down to how much a kids parents are worth...and if they make a decent amount of money and the kid is really good (top NCAA talent) they're going to go to school for free somewhere (even though you can only guarantee scholarship for one year at a time).

Syracuse has done a great job in a short time, but give a program the kind of budget they have and 10+ scholarships devoted solely to XC, and you're going to have a great program in a few years.

The Ivies get good kids, too, but it's a lot harder to get the TOP talent.

Recruiting is 95% of College coaching? Talent is 95% of any coaching. Why don't you just say you need talent to do well?

The preaching on here was that high miles and Kellog training trumps talent.

It doesn't.

How many full rides can Syracuse offer and how many on Cornell's team are eligible for an equal financial aid package? This is splitting hairs, at best. Stanford has high academic standards, too, you know.

pretty much a deer.

I want to make a couple of points related to the thread. For the record, I am a former Cornell runner who ran under Rojo in the early days of his tenure.

1) Evaluating Rojo's performance and evaluating his claim are totally different things. The claim may have been a bit ambitious but as others have said, his performance has been phenominal, especially in track and given the talent he has had. In XC, he has done really well in more recent years with top 3 finishes at HEPS in the past 3 years and individual qualifiers for NCAAs (Hine, Canaday, Edelman). Given that a recruiting cycle is 4-5 years, it seems likely that the XC program in the future will be more like the last 3 years than the first 4 of Rojo's tenure.

2) Making XC Nationals from the Ivy League (on the men's side) is very very tough, as others have said. The reasons for this have mostly been hashed out already in the thread: lack of scholarships, lack of 5th year of eligibility, hard to infultrate Iona/Providence in recent years, etc.

3) Making bold claims is not necessarily a bad thing. If Rojo did not have aspirations of grandeur, would he be a good coach? High expectations are usually good.

4) Rojo kept his word and did offer his resignation, as Wejo mentioned. Anyone with a brain, including his boss, knows that he has done an amazing job and can only improve from here.

if you think you can't have a consistently good team without foot locker guys (or foreigners), take a look at William and Mary's roster. they beat nc state (3 or 4 fl guys), uva (5 or 6 fl guys), duke (2 or 3 fl guys), and louisville (3 fl guys) with a team of 0 foot locker guys. maybe 1 at the most i believe.

cornell isn't any good, because they don't progress in their training. maybe the workouts get a little quicker, but all their other training is at the same slow ass pace (maybe the same duration?) from the time they get there to the time they leave. Of course, they're one of the most well rested and recovered teams in the NCAA...

big black wrote:

cornell isn't any good, because they don't progress in their training. maybe the workouts get a little quicker, but all their other training is at the same slow ass pace (maybe the same duration?) from the time they get there to the time they leave. Of course, they're one of the most well rested and recovered teams in the NCAA...

And you would know, I'm sure.

You can't pick and choose who gets what financial aid at an Ivy. That's the difference. There certainly is plenty of need-based aid, not arguing that.

I'm a Cornell alum from the late '80s, and I've never met the Johnsons. However, it seems to me the coach is doing a pretty good job. The distance guys are much faster than they were in the '80s, with a couple exceptions. I'm more interested in why programs like Dartmouth and, for a short time, Brown were so good in my day. Both finished top 10 in NCAA XC, and Dartmouth was second twice. Dartmouth had Lananna, I guess, but the guy's not god.

I'm guessing that running programs improve and decline almost by chance. The big exception, I think, is Stanford, which has all of the academic appeal of the Ivy League, better weather and scholarships to boot. Ultimately, there aren't that many great recruits around, and many of them end up flopping. There's no predicting who'll succeed in college and who won't. Just look at Oregon this year. Who'd have guessed that Stanford and University of Portland would be beating them now?

In more support for Cornell's development of athletes. As a former Pac-9 Conference runner in high school I ran against Newberg's own Sage Cannaday, one year my senior. Cannaday spent his time developing at Cornell and ran a 2:21 marathon and is now training with Brooks-Hansens. I consider that a terrific accomplishment, I only hope I can emulate that kind of success. This is only one anecdotal example, but I think it shows success within Cornell's program.

I'm at an ivy, and just in the past year we lost our best 800, mile, and cross recruits because of grades, money, and SATs respectively. Any of the three would have been the best in their respective discipline in the incoming class, and all wanted to come here badly, but it wasn't in the cards for them, and out of our coach's control. One of my friends was recently in the top 15 at his regional, and would have been going to school with me, but his grades weren't up to par. It's a lot harder to get guys than you would think

on a side note- the financial aid thing is cool and all, but it is almost non-existent for foreign students. so you can almost rule out overseas recruiting.