How is this diff from Alabama? Stony Brook!

It isnt, u just buy your team. I am guessing the coach is happy but what id New Zealand sinks? Then so does Stony Brook? It actually makes them the best women's cross country team in NY if I am not mistaken.

more complaining? how is it any different from Stanford or Washington having a team full of Footlocker finalists? Those schools "bought" the best Americans by your logic?

How many top Americans were calling Alabama or Stonybrook asking to run for their coach, attend their university an live in their area of the country? Have you ever even heard of the Stonybrook football, basketball, baseball, soccer teams?

So what is a coach to do? They are division 1 and have found a way to compete at the highest level of division 1.

Exactly what they are supposed to do.

I get emails from international kids and American kids. A kid is a kid is a kid. I compare their times and what it will cost to get them. The best talent, or the best value will get the scholarship money.

Sure I'd love every top kid in my city to want to attend my university. I call them. Some consider my school, some don't. I'd love if every top kid in my state wanted to attend my university. I contact them. Being that there were 2 teams from the state at NCAAs most of the best ones want to go there, not to my place. Should I settle for the next level of talent and therefore ALWAYS be a lesser program? Or when an international kid contacts me that is better than EVERY kid in my state, should I give them a scholarship so I can have some individuals that can compete with the top teams and maybe eventually even have a team that can compete with the top teams.

Sure, recruiting international kids is easier. MOstly email, no cost for recruiting visits, often MUCH better students, and very often more focused on the 2 reasons they are coming to the states: school, and running.

But in the end, as long as they are academically sound, I want the fastest kids I can get at my university. That is my job. If they are from Mars, fast and eligible, then I'd have Martians on my team.

Those runners are all from a "white" country, so they do not have an unfair advantage. Duh!

If you are a good coach who can show strong development in your athletes, American athletes will come. There has been too much talk about schools being hard to recruit to so they have to go the international route. A school like Texas Tech has a lot to offer in terms of places to train, large student body, great athletes, but no history of developing Americans. Therefore, practically none will come.

In summary, if you are a great coach and have scholarships available, you can get most Americans to come to your school, regardless of where you are located. If you are a crappy coach with scholarships, you will struggle to get anyone good from within the USA.

Simple stuff.

I agree but you have to admit, ALL from New Zealand, that just looks lame. No matter how much sense it makes, it looks lame. Just as I think a list of ALL Kenyans or ALL Irish looks lame. It gives the apperance of having the market cornered in a certain area and the coach just sits back and lives off that.

If I had an american football team in New Zealand and all I did was have a team of Americans on it I am guessing the other New Zealand schools would think that was lame too.

Does it mean I cant coach football? no. Could I complain that all the big Aukland schools get the best NZ talent and being stuck in a small uni in Christchurch means I dont and therefore still trying to field the most competitive team I bring in only Americans? Yes. It all makes sense.

I am just saying a full squad looks lame. I'd think at least a couple of Americans could be coached up to be on the team.

As far as fielding the best team yes it works, great good job. Just dont be suprised when people make fun of a loaded team and think all you can do is recruit good foreigners.

Here in the Great Lakes region we have a perfect example of a smaller program that is made up entirely American kids in the Toledo women. As a coach at another school in the region (but a smaller conference than the MAC) I can say they are a model I hope my program can follow.

The Toledo women are made up entirely of American kids mostly from Ohio with a few Michigan and Indiana kids. No Footlocker finalists. I spoke with Hadsell at the NCAAs and he was telling me how they have not one girl on their roster than ran under 5:00 for the 1600 and only one girl under 11:00 for 3200 in high school.

It can be done at the national level by actually coaching and recruiting the "second tier" athletes. I am not sure if we will ever be in the position that Toledo is in, but it gives me hope to keep working hard with my own program. Very motivating.

I just think it's funny that the international kids end up at the bottom of the barrel schools. Stony Brook? Texas Tech? A&M-CC? Fresno State? LIBERTY? No wonder they can't attact Americans: these schools stink.

It's also a laugh when the foreigner defenders chime in and say "well look, these Kenyans are just bettering themselves with an education." Wow, an education from Liberty!

brooks stones wrote:

It's also a laugh when the foreigner defenders chime in and say "well look, these Kenyans are just bettering themselves with an education." Wow, an education from Liberty!

From Liberty? More like a brainwashing.

I'm sure you are baiting, but in any case, Stony Brook is a very well respected school, especially on the east coast. It has a very well regarded hard-physical sciences department (chem/physics/bio/CS/eng, etc.)It is a SUNY school, so it will never rank high in the US News rankings. Big class sizes, transfer rates, alum giving being metrics USNews uses.Also, it has not been a DI school that long. All SUNYs were DIII for most of their existence. And as mentioned, it does not have well-known football or basketball programs.Be that as it may, with the population of the NY metro area, SB should be able to attract tier 1a-2 type runners (e.g., high placing FL regional runners) and develop them into decent DI athletes.IMO, there should be an NCAA rule where only 3 or 4 foreign runners can score on a XC team. The others, again whether 4 or 3, need to be Americans. This mix would be the best of both worlds, getting motivated international runners and giving the domestic ones a chance to develop along side.Congrats to SB and all their athletes!!An SB alum.

brooks stones wrote:

I just think it's funny that the international kids end up at the bottom of the barrel schools. Stony Brook? Texas Tech? A&M-CC? Fresno State? LIBERTY? No wonder they can't attact Americans: these schools stink.

It's also a laugh when the foreigner defenders chime in and say "well look, these Kenyans are just bettering themselves with an education." Wow, an education from Liberty!

How about instead of there being a cap on the number of non-Americans, the Americans just run faster than teams with 5 non-Americans?

Even talented Kenyans require development. There's a racist assumption that these coaches just hand them scholarships and then they win by sheer force of their genetics.

Just like teams that get 8:50 two-milers and finish in the top 5 at NCAAs, these Kenyan or New Zealand teams also require development. Now, if you were a coach at Texas Tech or Stony Brook or Alabama I'd really like to see you bring in some kid being recruited by Oregon or Stanford.

Didn't Rojo say that you need talent to make a good team regardless of the training?

What matters is their age.....if a "coach" simply stacks a team with overage foreign runners, then it's a joke. What are the ages of the Stonybrook Kiwis?

Doesnt matter how many foreign athletes. The bigger issue in our sport is a school like Oklahoma State putting 12.6 scholarships into distance running. That is a HUGE advantage!

uuy wrote:

Doesnt matter how many foreign athletes. The bigger issue in our sport is a school like Oklahoma State putting 12.6 scholarships into distance running. That is a HUGE advantage!

How is that an advantage when other schools can do the same thing if they want? nobody bitches that there are no distance runners at LSU?

LI Runner summed it up best...In the 90's, the school went from DIII to DI in 5 years...most tri-State kids and New England kids did not want to run for a "state" school...no matter how good it was...

As for recruiting, the coach in the mid-late 90's actually recruited & produced some distance All-Americans, along with signing a NH girl who ran 10:15ish for two miles indoors...he also recruited New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, and England athletes because of the international reputation of Stony Brook...with the internet it is easy to compare times (which is how a coach should send his/her money).

If memory serves me correct, I believe the coach at the time was told by the AD to develop a distance only program, so he modeled it after the more successful programs like Iona, Villanova, and Providence (ironically, that is where the current coach is from).

Here's a list of NZ kids in America:

http://www.nzrun.com/page/resources/usa-colleges

One of the problems that coach had was that he had only 2-3 scholarships - combined between both programs...with no promise of more and no track facility (they are building a 3 million $$$ one currently)...

Overall, the current coach is doing great things and US runners will probably start to take notice...hopefully, the HS coaches will stop bad-mouthing SUNY schools as wannabe programs...

Stony Brook has been trying for several years...

From Running Times in March 2010:

Stony Brook's current cross country and track rosters are composed of kids from New York and Rhode Island, as well as about a dozen student-athletes from New Zealand, Ireland, England and Sweden.

Ronan hasn't intended to build his program only with international runners. In fact, he'd love to get more student-athletes from the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions. But so far his recruiting approach has helped off set some of the challenges of starting nearly from scratch with a relatively young program.

Stony Brook is a strong academic school with a robust commitment to athletics from its administration, but it has been competing at the Division I level for only 10 years, and is only now building an indoor track facility. Honestly, Ronan says, most American teenagers--and their parents--haven't heard of Stony Brook, and that makes it tough to attract blue-chip talent from the U.S.

If anything, Ronan's international pedigree is an advantage, no different than Paul Ereng at Texas-El Paso or Mick Byrne at Wisconsin (and formerly Iona). It's still working for Treacy, who, with 10 athletes from Ireland, England, New Zealand and Canada in his program, once again had his men's and women's cross country teams finish in the top 20 at last fall's NCAA meet.

"In order to get in with the kids running at Foot Locker, you have to have a reputation," Ronan says. "A lot of those kids want to go to the big programs they've heard of before--Georgetown, Colorado, places like that--but we're not at that level yet. And we still get people who think Stony Brook is a Division III school. So my goal has been to get athletes I can build a competitive program with and hopefully start to get to that level."

So far, so good. The Seawolves have made big strides in the last couple of years thanks in part to the Van Dalens, earning a couple of trips to the NCAA cross country championships and numerous America East Conference individual and team titles in track and cross country. The women's cross country team won the 2009 America East conference meet with Holly and Lucy placing second and third, respectively, followed by Laura Huet (Ireland) in fourth, Lisa Voltaire (Sweden) in seventh and Hayley Green (New Zealand) in 12th.

They narrowly missed a third straight trip to the NCAA championships last fall, but Ronan's hoping the experience and training will pay off on the track in the spring.

John Chaplin and Ted Banks wrote:

What are the ages of the Stonybrook Kiwis?

Born November 1988 - just turned 22 this month.

This topic always comes up on LetsRun and it really pisses me off. Where in NCAA XC does it say Americans only?

There are thousands of threads debating what Americans can do to become competitive with East Africans. How about race them while we develop our athletes? How is having the most competitive NCAA championships possible a bad thing? This will only raise the bar for the Americans. These foreign athletes are training partners and mentors for other runners. They push and help develop other Americans on their teams. When you race another athlete it does not matter what their nationality is you race then all the same, maybe they will push you to times you only dreamed of.

I attribute our current American distance resurgence to athletes like KK, Lagat, Abdi,Lomong and Meb. For far too long Americans have been content to be the best in America and win national championships. These runners have raised the bar. Now to be the best American you must also be internationally competitive. If you can beat someone of East African decent on your home soil then you can mix it up with the Kenyan and Ethiopian national squads. Think about what is different from late 1980s and 1990s American distance stars and Teg, Solinski, Rupp, Wheating, Hall, Ritz and Webb. They have all developed in this international NCAA environment and look at the results.

long sox wrote:

John Chaplin and Ted Banks wrote:

What are the ages of the Stonybrook Kiwis?

Born November 1988 - just turned 22 this month.

Then that's completely reasonable.

It has always come up on LetsRun because people feel strongly about it. For state funded public university programs, many people opinions side on the 'let's spend scholarship money on our kids'. Having said that, I do like to see some foreigners on the team and in the classroom. As mentioned in other posts and threads, these kids take the sport and academics seriously and add a valuable experience to the American student-athletes.On another point, I would agree that these foreigners would be great training partners IF there was an equal mix of American and foreign runners on the team of equal ability. Gettting five high-end imports and mixing them with lesser talented, non-recruited kids does nothing for those runners' development. Hopefully, as the SB program gets public attention, more tri-state kids will consider applying and attending the school. I think they have a great coach there.