What the the hell happpend to UCLA, they suck...

Looking at their roster I think they need to recruit more....I know that supposably this weiner from Illinois named Micky Cobrin signed a verbal and is actually getting some money to go there

I was supprised as well.. I'm guessing it has to do with the fact that they are largely a young team. Also I think Rankin was injured most of the year and just came back b4 pacs, so he obviously wasnt able to run the kind of race he is capable. I also think Justin Pan. redshirted and he is one of their top guys. Given this though I still agree that they should have done better than 8th (for those of you who dont know the pac10 actually consists of 8 men's teams - thank you title ix).

It's a joke for a school that size to be so bad. Back in the day (mid 80's) my team was made up of guys who were told that they "were not Pac 10 material" by Larson. We had a D1 XC All American and NCAA 1,500m qualifier, a D1 10,000m qualifier and a D1 NCAA steeple qualifier. Granted not all in the same year but still UCLA wouldn't even look at these guys! They need to find a new coach!

as posted on Dyestat (by one of their athletes I believe):

"Just want to add for the Record to all prospective runners who hear of Ucla or ever thought of running there.

Ucla is great for the 800m 1500m runners. It is not for distance 2mile and up guys or for that matter cross country, they do have great facilities and traveling was awesome, the best places, food, and pac10 meets with arizona, stanford, etc are surely competative. The program like any other when needing to fill the ranks looks outside of the box because of politics. Peterson after Kim Mortensen(sp?) who made a huge hole in the program filled the ranks with a swedish runner, she never heard of Kim and never asked during recruiting what had happened, she looked at the possibilities and not the dissappointments of the past, the result.. Lena won NCAA's and broke ucla's women's 1500m record(4:09). Ucla on the women's side also got Alejandra Barientos (state champ at mile (4:25 1500m)) last year. time will tell but she's a strong girl so people are not probably going to be asking so many unearthly questions about other people's lives on recruiting trips. there is a reason he recuited so many girls for this year, he could because they looked good, 2 runners at 2:02 for the women! Burgees ran 2:20 in high school and she had about the fastest time heading into ncaa's with Lena.

The men's side has been building period, coach Larson left and Peterson took over. Larson did not recruit for a year, the distance squad got a few walkons that year and they mostly remain. The Coach Peterson and his low mileage philosophy is great for 800/1500m guys, heck he has a guys at 8:12 3:47 1:49, a 3:48 and 1:50, a 1:49 and 47, and a lot of at 1:52 guys.

Honestly Ucla is at a disadvantage being right on Sunset Blvd for training. There are trails and the team does travel a lot to a local park which has a huge grass field for intervals but I'd call it more like cross city running. Long runs without a car or buddy with one is a huge disadvantage. running 15miles along sidewalks searching for grass is a pain and stressful. but with a drive a lot of trails are close by in the santa monica mountains. The track training is very intense but with low mileage so its easier to handle.

walk ons, at first coach sounds like he deters people by standing off and not pretending the door isn't open. in fact a person just has to be totally committed to being on the team, a person does not earn a spot he gets it because he deserves it, he has to show he wants to be a bruin not a 800 guy or whatever. true fitness is important for trying out but the will to be there is more important. guys do walk on, they try out the keep it up and sooner or later can be on, again a person should not give up trying out. walk ons does not mean i can just go through the motions a person must never doubt they can compete in college and do what it takes to succeed.

Myself - Its a personal story not important, if you are as i've been saying a lot a purely distance guy go somewhere else. if u want to go to one of the best colleges in the usa and go there cheaply( if ur Ca resident only) then ucla is good. the program has the money to support people, addidas equipment, awesome training rooms, massages (yes!), ice baths, electro whatever gizmos and a lot of smart trainers.

If u show up thinking of the disappoinments of others and have another school in mind a person should not waste their time. really ucla's program is not distance orientated like Stanford, 1.5 scholarships to their 7. but stanford's system says you could be a junior until ur running pac10's or a conference meet, so really at ucla a distance guy is a unique breed. how many freshman can say they ran the pac10 meet, west regionals,a ton of invitationals, got to travel with the track team everywhere and got all the benefits they got."

Micky Corbin did not win anything in Illinois. He was seventh in the state meet in a weak year. I am from the state, and can honestly say this is the first time I have ever heard anything about him. If he is getting money at UCLA, that should explain why they are so bad.

A quick Google search pulled up a 3 mile cross country race that he finished second in 14:45 to Sam Romanoski. Not great, but not horrible, and certainly conceivable that he could latch on to the tail end of a DI Cross Country team that isn't a world beater. Not everyone is Ritz. Not every program is Stanford.

Actually, overall, the Illinois state meet was as good as it was in any past year based on the top 30 times and so on, it's just that the leaders went out too hard and died that last mile and a half, that's why the top 6 or 7 were slower than expected.

If you live in Illinois and have never heard of Cobrin until state then where the hell have you been. He has won many races throughout the season and ran great against Romanoski (an All American in cross) twice. At state he was in second with a half mile to go, but just didnt have the finishing kick he had hoped for. He improved a ton from last year, so I think its a great pick up for UCLA.

Gumpy what are you on? Even with Meb, UCLA wasn't that good. They never mix it up, and I don't know why. Corbin, by the way, is a solid D1 prospect from suburban Chicago, (sub 9:30 as a junior) mid 14:40's on a flat 2.95 course at state. He's good, but there are dozens of kids in So Cal that are better.

UC Riverside sucks even worse!!!

I think UCLA may be suffering from the New York City Marathon syndrome..."people should want to come here"! And the high school kids do want to go to UCLA. Peterson gets good kids year in and year out. He doesn't really recruit them and once they're there, he doesn't have the coaching ability to make them national qualifiers. There are a ton of coaches across the country who could take the kids on his roster and make them Pac-10 contenders and could probably get them to nationals. But if you look at UCLA over the past decade, their best athletes, Meb and Lena, would have been successful anywhere. Larson was a horrible recruiter and I don't think he's a very good coach. Other than Meb, who did he ever coach to a podium finish at Nationals? I could coach Meb, and he would still be awesome. Until UCLA loses the attitude and realizes they're a mediocre cross country program, it'll never get better...no matter who walks-on, err, is recruited.

Bob Larsen did coach Jess Struzel to an indoor 800m NCAA title one year if I recall correctly, and he was a mutliple All-American in that event...Mark Hauser, an All-American in cross-country in 1998, ran his best under the coaching of Larsen which included Mark running 7:57 indoor 3000m, 4:01 mile, 13:47 5000m...also, don't forget the NCAA indoor DMR champion team of Struzel, Mike Granville, Brian Fell, and Hauser that ran a then American Record in that event. Also, Larsen developed five runners in 1982 that ran the 10000m event all between 29:25 and 28:16. The 28:16 guy being Steve Ortiz who later went on to run 2:12 in his first marathon under the guidance of Coach Bob Larsen. Furthermore, Coach Larsen had a knack for developing mediocre high school runners into PAC-10 scoring steeplechasers...if you look at the PAC-10 track and field results over the last few years of his career you will see this. Furthermore, many people don't know this, But Bob Larsen dealt with prostate cancer over the last couple years of his coaching at UCLA and probably took away from his motivation for coaching and recruiting. However, since he's regained his health fully, his drive for coaching has come back. I believe he also got nominated to coach the distance squad for the 2004 Olympics...does anyone know if he got the job? All in all, I think Bob Larsen is an excellent coach. I don't know about Eric Peterson, what's the word on this guy?

Yeah, go Jamul Toads!

Also Grossmont College...more facts. What about Peterson? Facts are facts!!!

Yeah, I really agree about Cobrin. Mickey is a great kid, and he's improving a ton. I think that he could be really solid in cross and pretty good on the track at the college distances. He's a real strong kid with a great work ethic. Thats what develops in a kid when you don't grow until the summer before junior year and go from seventh on your team to seventh in the state. Gotta love it.

He certainly did grow, I was a teammate of his, he was like four feet tall when he was a freshman, now he's like 6 feet, he improved a ton.

Peterson made the girls team into a sucess over several years, he just started with the guys, what says he couldn't do that with them?