Could the FM (Manlius) girls team have qualified for NCAA D1 Nationals?

the rocket. wrote:

Yes they could. Those times are great 1500s and miles, but the 5km's are actually not that impressive. I think on the track FM could have a team spread between 16:00-17:00

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Not a chance.

Yes, as I said, it sure is possible F-M could put five under 17:00, which many college women's teams that don't get to the NCAA meet can also boast.

As for F-M's top three under 16:30, I don't think that is in any way likely either. In last spring's NCAA Division I outdoor final list on TFRRS, I count 7 freshmen women total under 16:30, four under 16:25 and one (Hasay) under 16:20 in the 5000. As well as F-M ran this past weekend I highly doubt they have three girls who are among the top 7 freshmen in the entire NCAA. As another poster correctly noted, the additional demands on a runner that are required to run under 16:30 on the track AND race well in a crowded, deeper 6K cross country field would be too much of a jump for high school kids at this stage of their development. Running fast in a long track competition and racing well in a deep cross country field aren't as easy as you are implying, even for an historical national championship cross country team.

Three under 16:45 might be more possible but even THAT would be amazing. So, good for them. But why can't we just celebrate their high school accomplishments? They'll have time enough later on the down the road, if they choose, to measure themselves against college competition when they get to that stage of their life.

Good points. At first I thought the results would prove them (FM) to be a legitimate contender with some of the best college teams in the country. But through this discussion I have learned just how amazingly deep and competitive the NCAA is.

FM is incredibly good and may very well be the best prep team ever, and for us even to be discussing how they would rank at the NCAA D1 level is a testament to how good this team is.

Lincoln-Sudbury

Claire Arthur '10-Dartmouth

Ellie Hylton '09-Harvard

Holly Clarke '10-Johns Hopkins

Rachael Potter '09-Haverford College

Emily Mepham '10-Brown

Jennifer Gossels '09-Williams College

Jessica Griffin '09-UNC, soccer, was a bigger contributer on the track.

Molly Binder '08-Wake Forest

the rocket. wrote:

Good points. At first I thought the results would prove them (FM) to be a legitimate contender with some of the best college teams in the country. But through this discussion I have learned just how amazingly deep and competitive the NCAA is.

FM is incredibly good and may very well be the best prep team ever, and for us even to be discussing how they would rank at the NCAA D1 level is a testament to how good this team is.

where would they place at D2 and D3 Nat's?

ytf wrote:

Lincoln-Sudbury

Claire Arthur '10-Dartmouth

Ellie Hylton '09-Harvard

Holly Clarke '10-Johns Hopkins

Rachael Potter '09-Haverford College

Emily Mepham '10-Brown

Jennifer Gossels '09-Williams College

Jessica Griffin '09-UNC, soccer, was a bigger contributer on the track.

Molly Binder '08-Wake Forest

that's solid..... any others?

THEY ARE ON STEROIDS!!!!!! No way they can be this good and keep improving. Sorry, I just don't find these performances possible from a high school team. They need to get drug-tested.

Jealous much? ;)

Look beyond our national borders. Other nations compete at this level. It is not difficult to believe that this team is just out-training the rest in this country, with evolved coaching. The days for pouting are over kids and coaches. Evolve or keep scratching your heads. It is safe to say that this program is on par with the best single school teams from other countries. Certainly they'd not beat the best Kenyan teams out there! Are you suggesting that the Kenyan youth teams are all doping too? Interesting comparison. How well would FM's team place against other youth teams (from one school) in other nations? How well would FM's team have placed against recent Kenyan team that competed at NXN? Bet they'd not have been too far off.

Bottom line is that US kids in this sport are lazy, spoiled, and generally weak. Sounds like most of the nation is still that way judging by the accusations and complaints. Can't beat em...so beat on em!! EPO??? Seriously??? An entire team with such notoriety???? You people are freaking insane. Would have gone public and parents would have found out long ago. You mean to suggest that Dozens upon dozens of high school kids from the same program, year after year, being in the spotlight for 5 national victories in a row, are involved in a mass doping scandal??? You must not have ever seen the innocence of these kids, or heard them in interviews, or seen the happiness and sincerity of the entire group parents included. Get real. And get off your asses and do work.

Just looked at the nxn results. Keeping in individuals, Manlius girls finished 2,4,6,16. What about the individuals who finished 1,3,5,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15? All dopers? Must be!

Tanya Skagle wrote:

... Maybe it isn't impossible, but the chances are remote. No high school team has ever been close to that level. A list of high school all-stars from any given year isn't much better than that...

Not saying that I agree or disagree with your analysis but this part kind of jumped out.

A list of high school all-stars?

Correct me if I am mistaken but if you take all of the best teams in the nation (minus F-M) at NXN and took their combined top seven as a single team, wouldn't that qualify as something of a national-level all star team? F-M just beat that team!

Another way 2 look at it wrote:

Correct me if I am mistaken but if you take all of the best teams in the nation (minus F-M) at NXN and took their combined top seven as a single team, wouldn't that qualify as something of a national-level all star team?

Well, the idea of what constitutes a "high school all star team" is a little up in the air, but let's just arbitrarily use the top 21 cross-country runners (up through an imaginary "3rd team") as a cutoff. This includes all runners, not just those on teams (errr, clubs) at NXN and includes all runners not at NXN. These top 21 runners will most likely occupy the lion's share of spots on the top 10 lists in the 1,600/mile and 3,200/2M in the spring. So a top 10 spot on a yearly distance list in track is also a reasonable cutoff for "all star" status (you'll see why I included track times in a bit).

At the NXN championship, the F-M runners placed 2nd, 4th, 6th, 16th, 29th, 96th and 107th overall. If we score F-M vs. the rest of the field, we find F-M with a score of 2-4-6-16-29 = 57 and the rest of the field scoring 1-3-5-7-8 = 24. So F-M didn't in fact beat even the non-F-M NXN all stars, and this doesn't take into account that on the girls' side, more of the top individuals opted out of NXN to focus on FLCC. At NXN, you had no Aisling Cuffe, Allie Woodward, Gabrielle Anzalone, Megan Venables, K&E Fluehr, Molly Grabill, Julie Nacouzi, Maddie Meyers, Abbey Leonardi, etc. You'd think most (if not all) of those would be on at least a 3rd-team all-star cross-country squad for 2010 and would certainly make a huge dent in the top 20 at NXN, probably knocking the F-M runners back between 3 and 10 spots each. Then there's Sarah Baxter, regarded as one of the top few elites in the country, who isn't (wasn't) running either NXN or FLCC.

So it stands to reason the 5th F-M runner (29th overall at NXN) would be doing well to be in the top 50 (given an equal effort to the one at NXN) in a championship which included all of the nation's best runners. They would still win the team title in such a meet, and their team score might not be much higher than the 27 it was at NXN, since most of the runners who would split up their top 5 would either not be on teams or would have little to no backup if they were on teams (i.e., most of the top teams actually were at NXN and few other teams would have 2nd runners in the top 50 in a huge national meet). Yes, F-M is dominant at the high school level.

It's largely SWAG, but I'm thinking F-M would probably have 3 runners on a 21-deep all star cross-country team, perhaps with none on the "1st team" (top 7). Their 4th and 5th would end up in the 35 to 50 range at best in a race against all the best in the country. There are actually probably a lot more runners than that who would push back the F-M 4 & 5 if we added the top 25 or so runners from each FL region to one national championship race against the NXN teams. But that's just more SWAG.

Since we can't broadly compare high school cross runners to college cross runners on a head-to-head basis (there are a few individuals who run at races like US Juniors), the easiest way to draw comparisons of ability is with track times. Everybody runs the 1,500/1,600/mile and the 3,000/3,200/2M at some point in the winter or spring. The sheer number of performances allows for a more reasonable comparison between the depth of high school running vs. college running.

I'm not going to pore through every roster of every team that made NCAAs this year to compile all the track times, then make some guess at how fast those times would convert to 3,200 times, but I'm saying without too much fear of error that every one of those teams had 5 runners who could break 10:20 for 3,200 (that's close to 9:40 for 3,000 and is "worth" about 16:45 for 5,000 based on depth charts). If for some reason they do have a mediocre 4th or 5th runner who couldn't do that, in order to make NCAAs, they had to have had a couple of Van Dalen types way up there to offset their poor depth. Sure, somebody's going to point out more exceptions - Rice, for example, didn't have 5 sub-16:45s, with the top cross runner (Nicole Mericle) having an official track PR of 16:52, but Mericle was beating a 16:11 runner on the team, so a little common sense says Rice does in fact have 5 runners who could smoke 10:20 for 3,200 if they chose to. This represents a time that is usually near the top 20 in the country at the high school level. And where did we figure F-M's 4th and 5th runners stood in the national pecking order? Certainly no better than 16th and 29th (their actual places in a race which was sans at least 10 of the top 25 runners) and probably no better than 35th and 50th (which is probably being generous if the top 250 high school runners got together for one big race).

Wait, I've almost forgotten the topic of this post. Oh yeah - it's about F-M defeating a "high school all star team" at NXN. Well, they're the best school, no doubt. They beat the other teams, but the field as a whole there beat them easily and if we add in all the no-shows, it would probably be a rout after F-M's top 3 came in. It seems like they could put 3 in the top 20-ish spots on a banner day, but their team as a whole falls off a bit after that and plummets completely after number 5. Looking at track times, it would likewise be shocking if F-M had more than 3 of the top 21 distance runners in the country (certainly unlikely they get a combined 5 in the top 10 of the 1,600 and 3,200 yearly lists). It's highly probable that there are at least 50 college teams that could put up those numbers, though, so those comparisons aren't really realistic or fair.

A better question is how the F-M girls will do once they are IN the NCAA. Sadly, history has shown that they will probably not even be members of their college teams. Of course you Aris apologists will say this is because he is so much better than the college coaches. Yet it is funny how these dumb college coaches can take lesser high school stars and turn them into athletes that are far greater than F-M girls ever become. Simple really. It is called allowing girls to mature properly. A coach who consistamtly peaks girls at the age 14-16 is not a coach, but a butcher.

Amen.

spokane xc wrote:

Even if this comparison is adequate, the conditions at NXN were incredibly slow, thus exaggerating the time differences between FM and Saugus. Maybe had they both run at Woodward, FM would have been 40 seconds faster.

I just find it hard to believe that FM, as good as they might be, could put that many runners within the range of Jordan Hasay. You also have to consider that these girls were in the thick of the race, chasing each other, etc. where Hasay was by herself.

Additionally, California teams historically do poorly at NXN, especially when conditions are difficult. Thus, in dry and still conditions, Saugus may finish closer to FM.

I agree

Corona del Mar (Newport XC Club)

From a 4 year period with all girls are running for their respective schools:

Marisa Cummings '14- Princeton

Sarah Cummings '11- Princeton

Hilary May '11-Harvard

Kristina Funahasi '14- Harvard

Kim Condino '13-Penn

Melanie Powers '14- Wake Forest

Shelby Buckley '12-USC

Saugus (Newhall XC Club)

From 2006 to present all girls are running for their respective schools:

Shannon Murakami '10- UCLA

Amber Murakami '14- UCLA

Nina Moore '12- Long Beach State

Annie Randall '13- Long Beach State

Brianna Jauregui '11- Glendale College

Keri Molt '11- Glendale College

Toccoa Kahovec '12- Cal Lutheran

Courtney Wilson '13- UC Irvine

Kaylin Mahoney '15- Columbia University

Kathryn Buchan is running pretty well for Albany...ran 18:10 at Franklin park to take 16th at her conference meet (2nd UA finisher)---toga's Brianne Bellon was Albany's 4th girl in 18:29.

Not exactly NCAA qualifying performances but definitely solid freshman seasons

***meant to say Kathryn Fanning