Any NEPSTA XC kids out there?

lurking

williston has a very solid team, suffield is weak, cushing's sisay will win even if he handstand walks the last mile

I've actually always been curious how this works. Do kids that attend these prep schools in the NE compete in their state athletic association's competitions or does the entire region of the US compete against one another in its own system?

What kinds of runners come out the association? Any recent college studs compete in this system prior to the NCAA?

I'll bite...

NEPSTA stands for the New England Private School Track Association which I tend to think of as consisting primarily of the schools in the eastern part of Massachusetts-- which is a combination of day (re: BB&N, St. Sebastian, Roxbury Latin, Thayer) and boarding schools (Tabor, Milton Academy, St. Paul's. These schools are part of a league called the ISL in which all sixteen field fall XC teams, but less than ten field spring track teams and as a result, the ISL teams that do created NEPSTA and incorporated smaller day and boarding schools like Pingree, Tabor and Windsor to form NEPSTA) They participate in a regional league called NEPSAC (New England Private School Athletic Conference) which is made up of NEPSTA and the well known, national in scope boarding schools of Phillips Andover, Phillips Exeter, Deerfield, and Taft to name a few.

They are their own animal and are not part of any high school federation. Many of the schools outside of NEPSTA have a formal post graduate program...a 5th year. The NEPSTA schools do not although many hockey players transfer from public school and repeat as juniors and seniors in these schools so while they don't have a formal post graduate program, one could say its "informal."

All the schools have good to great academics, facilities are top notch (inclusive of on campus hockey rinks) but if your question is about track and field and XC....

The league's philosophy most closely resembles the NESCAC schools (re: Tufts, Williams, Amherst) and to a lessor extent the Ivy league.

Most of the male distance and middle distance athletes fit very well in D3 programs. Times on the track and in XC would not be considered elite and your rarely, if ever, see these kids compete outside of their leagues. Once the season is over, the season is over as the majority of the schools do not have indoor track, or the better schools outdoor track, and as most have mandatory athletic participation rules, the athletes move on to another sport. So they are traditionally "under trained" and maybe, my view at least, "over raced" as they race weekly in the fall at the 5K distance and have a very short spring track season in which league meets and championships are all fit in a period from early April to mid-may. I thinking coaching is "spotty" through out the schools as you have some very good coaches, and some very average ones (so its not much different than public schools in that regard).

Because of the presence of boarding schools, the coaches in the league have a gentleman's agreement relative to off season contact, particularly over the summer. As your athletes are far flung and not located in the same town or city like your public school, few train seriously over the summer and I think the training and racing philosophy is more tied to getting the majority of kids fit than it is to produce good runners. Also, the mandatory athletic participation rule creates huge XC and T&F teams as these sports take everyone of every ability.

There are some D1 girls who went to NEPSAC schools racing at a very high level. Kayla Hatton at Stanford went to Exeter...but she didn't race for them her senior year, and due to injury only ran for her school her freshman year. Emily Stark of Yale, a freshman, went to Middlesex and is the #2 or 3 girl at Yale this fall.

Forgot another D1 female who ran in the NEPSAC--

Katrina Coogan, currently of Georgetown, went to Exeter.

And if I said Hatton went to Exeter I need to correct myself, she went to Phillips Andover.

Let's go div IV.... we suck

That's pretty cool. Thanks for sharing. I know you mentioned the whole gentleman's agreement among coaches for not having organized practices, but are the kids themselves allowed to train over the summer on their own?

Haha I didn't know about any "gentleman's agreement" but we don't have formal practices at school or anything, but at my school anyway we certainly run over the summer and have some captain's practices.

As far as college runners, there generally aren't too many "studs" but plenty of solid runners. On the guys' side, Tully Hannan went to Loomis Chaffee (DI) and I was a DIII All-American last year at Bates. Last year's DI and DII champions (Peter Geithner and Matt Klein) are both freshmen at Dartmouth. The best kid in NEPSTA this year is probably James Randon from DIII Middlesex (12:25ish I think at Manhattan), which somehow has a really good team despite being a tiny school.

nexc2013 wrote:

williston has a very solid team, suffield is weak, cushing's sisay will win even if he handstand walks the last mile

From what I've seen at least Williston seems to have a good top 3, but I don't think they have the depth to really have a shot at winning. They could place pretty high though.

I thought the same thing about Sisay after Canterbury, but then he wasn't in any of Cushing's results for a month and at the Williston Shaler Invite was only third. Was he injured? If he didn't actually lose any fitness since Canterbury though and for whatever reason just didn't run fast that day, I would expect him to run away with it.

Does anyone know anything about the Hebron Academy course? I have no idea what to expect.

dmxc wrote:

Haha I didn't know about any "gentleman's agreement" but we don't have formal practices at school or anything, but at my school anyway we certainly run over the summer and have some captain's practices.

As far as college runners, there generally aren't too many "studs" but plenty of solid runners. On the guys' side, Tully Hannan went to Loomis Chaffee (DI) and I was a DIII All-American last year at Bates. Last year's DI and DII champions (Peter Geithner and Matt Klein) are both freshmen at Dartmouth. The best kid in NEPSTA this year is probably James Randon from DIII Middlesex (12:25ish I think at Manhattan), which somehow has a really good team despite being a tiny school.

Damn, 12:25 at Manhattan is actually pretty damn good IMHO.

How do they determine diviisions (DI, DIII, etc.?)? Also, how many schools in totall are in the NEPTSA?

Here's another point of comparison-

Yesterday the ISL championships were held at Nobles on a 5K course.

The winning boys time was 15:50 with six boys under 17 minutes. The winning girls time was 19:36 with three girls under 20.

The Cape Ann League, a small public school league north of Boston had their championships last weekend. Schools are a similar size to ISL schools-- 400 to 600 kids.

On a 5K course the winning time was 15:44 with ten boys under 17:00 minutes. For girls the winning time was 18:36 with 10 girls under 20:00.

The gap is even wider if you look at other public school leagues of similar size (re: Dual County League consisting of schools like Concord, Weston, Boston Latin) they had 25 boys under 17:00 minutes with three sub 16:00.

The kids (re:boys) who go from NEPSTA schools to D1 (re: Dartmouth) are usually the slowest of all incoming freshman. I offer up as examples Henry Russell (Dartmouth) who won D1 two years ago and Sam Belcher (Cornell) who was the D1 triple Track winner in the spring for the 800, 1500, and 3000 neither are on their school's roster this year for XC.

All I'm saying is that its a tough jump from these schools to D1 as a boy and you would probably be better off accepting a year as a "red shirt" just to train all three seasons.

Ask Sisay....he ran for Brookline High School last year as to the differences.

how does the northwest park course that loomis is using run? fast?

Recognize any of these names? Bigger ones for college performances would be Nightingale (Princeton) and Norton (Dartmouth). They raced Northwest Park for Nepsta Champs back in '03. I think Nightingale was a multiple time all American.This was a pretty strong year for Nepsta xc (top 15 all New England).NEPSTA DIVISION I Cross Country Championship Nov. 8, 2003 5K Hosted by: Loomis Chaffe School, Windsor, CT=============================== *** BOYS - VARSITY RESULTS ***PLACE TmPl TIME PACE NAME SCHOOL CLASS RACE#===== ==== ======= ===== 1 1 15:31 5:00 Frank Divittorio CHOATE 2004 46 2 2 15:32 5:00 Harry Norton EXETER 2004 119 3 3 15:39 5:03 John Brimhall CHOATE 2004 42 4 4 15:40 5:03 David Nightingale (capt.) LOOMIS CHAFFEE 2004 159 5 5 15:45 5:05 Nate Gelb CHOATE 2004 52 6 6 15:46 5:05 Joshua Wolfe ANDOVER 2004 21 7 7 15:50 5:06 Arno Ferguson EXETER 2005 109 8 8 16:12 5:13 Nick Blixt DEERFIELD 2005 87 9 9 16:14 5:14 Sam Reid Captain DEERFIELD 2004 97 10 10 16:16 5:15 John C Petrofsky NMH 2004 190 11 11 16:17 5:15 Taylor Gorman LOOMIS CHAFFEE 2005 153 12 12 16:19 5:16 Sam Moorhead ST. PAUL'S 2005 213 13 13 16:20 5:16 Peter Murphy TAFT 2005 240 14 14 16:23 5:17 Michael Stubbs LOOMIS CHAFFEE 2004 162 15 15 16:24 5:17 Josh Reinhold EXETER 2004 120

2013nexc wrote:

how does the northwest park course that loomis is using run? fast?

Andrew Wheating ran in NEPSTAs:

http://www.coolrunning.com/results/04/ma/Nov13_NEPSTA_set1.shtml

Also of note in that race is 4th place finisher Nick Karwoski who was 2nd in both the 5,000 and Steeple at the 2010 NCAA D3 Nationals.

The Taye brothers were High School studs at Cushing Academy. One went to Georgetown and the other went to Virginia.

It is strange that these schools are so strong in Soccer, Hockey, and Basketball but do not have very strong running programs.

Thanks for the informative "bite." A few things incorrect in here:- Not to sound douchy (OK, it does sound incredibly douchy), but it is New England Preparatory School Track Association.- Nepsta includes schools from eastern NY state (Trinity Pawling) all the way to schools throughout New England with multiple divisions based on size of school. Division 1, for example, consists of (in order of 2011 xc finish) -- :Exeter (NH), Deerfield (MA), Hotchkiss (CT), NMH (MA), Choate (CT), Loomis (CT), Andover (MA), Brunswick (CT), St. Pauls (NH), Milton (MA), Belmont Hill (MA), Avon Old Farms (CT), Taft (CT), Trinity Pawling (NY)- Many Nepsta schools DO allow post grads. In fact, Tully Hannon, the NE Champ, won it as a senior from Avon in '08 and as a PG from Loomis in '09- Every once in a while you will get some studs coming out of Nepsta (Patrick Bensen from Deerfield qualified for Footlocker Final in '00 / David Nightingale was a three time all American at Princeton & ran a 13:4x 5k/Taye brothers in '05 were top 2 northeast finishers at Footlocker Finals)- Some coaches train their kids hard in the off season and have rigorous training plans. It all depends on where you are and who your coaches are.- You do see a lot of movement toward the NESCAC schools and some Ivies. Academic/athletic environments are very similar to life at these schools.How I didn't sound like too much of an a-hole here...

dmxc wrote:

Haha I didn't know about any "gentleman's agreement" but we don't have formal practices at school or anything, but at my school anyway we certainly run over the summer and have some captain's practices.

As far as college runners, there generally aren't too many "studs" but plenty of solid runners. On the guys' side, Tully Hannan went to Loomis Chaffee (DI) and I was a DIII All-American last year at Bates. Last year's DI and DII champions (Peter Geithner and Matt Klein) are both freshmen at Dartmouth. The best kid in NEPSTA this year is probably James Randon from DIII Middlesex (12:25ish I think at Manhattan), which somehow has a really good team despite being a tiny school.

We can't really know if Randon is the best this year, because he never got a chance to race Phillips Exeter Academy, the defending Interschols champion team. The team is undefeated this season going into the championship meet this weekend and the top runner, Kieran Scannel, is also undefeated and has run 15:48 on their home course. Cushing's kid also has not raced Exeter, and I'm not sure if Cushing raced Middlesex this year.

There's the all star meet at St. Marks the weekend after NEPSTA. Would be cool to have more kids show up for that.

Cushing & MX haven't raced as MX rarely ventures outside the ISL.

No offense taken and I appreciate the perspective of a "vet".

I think you can tell that I live in the eastern part of Massachusetts so I am most familiar with ISL, EIL, and a couple of other schools in this general direction. (and I know I missed a bunch including Frank Shorter's alma mater Northfield Mt. Hermon)

Regarding Post Grads, once again, stuck in the my own geographic vortex.

Outside of Andover and Exeter, and the before mentioned ISL and EIL, which school's would you say have the best programs/coaches.

Finally, to the poster throwing the gauntlet down regarding Middlesex-- you are correct, ISL schools operate in an "ISL bubble".

I watched the NEPSTA Div. 3 races today and there was some excellent talent. Middlesex dominated the boys race taking the top 3 positions. It was a tough course with tight turns, mud, and slippery downhills. Nobody could run this course under 16:00.